Issue |
EPJ Nuclear Sci. Technol.
Volume 4, 2018
Special Issue on 4th International Workshop on Nuclear Data Covariances, October 2–6, 2017, Aix en Provence, France – CW2017
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | 14 | |
Number of page(s) | 8 | |
Section | Applied Covariances | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/epjn/2018016 | |
Published online | 29 June 2018 |
https://doi.org/10.1051/epjn/2018016
Regular Article
A comparison of uncertainty propagation techniques using NDaST: full, half or zero Monte Carlo?
OECD Nuclear Energy Agency,
Boulogne-Billancourt, France
* e-mail: ndast@oecd-nea.org
Received:
23
October
2017
Received in final form:
18
January
2018
Accepted:
4
May
2018
Published online: 29 June 2018
Uncertainty propagation to keff using a Total Monte Carlo sampling process is commonly used to solve the issues associated with non-linear dependencies and non-Gaussian nuclear parameter distributions. We suggest that in general, keff sensitivities to nuclear data perturbations are not problematic, and that they remain linear over a large range; the same cannot be said definitively for nuclear data parameters and their impact on final cross-sections and distributions. Instead of running hundreds or thousands of neutronics calculations, we therefore investigate the possibility to take those many cross-section file samples and perform ‘cheap’ sensitivity perturbation calculations. This is efficiently possible with the NEA Nuclear Data Sensitivity Tool (NDaST) and this process we name the half Monte Carlo method (HMM). We demonstrate that this is indeed possible with a test example of JEZEBEL (PMF001) drawn from the ICSBEP handbook, comparing keff directly calculated with SERPENT to those predicted with NDaST. Furthermore, we show that one may retain the normal NDaST benefits; a deeper analysis of the resultant effects in terms of reaction and energy breakdown, without the normal computational burden of Monte Carlo (results within minutes, rather than days). Finally, we assess the rationality of using either full or HMMs, by also using the covariance data to do simple linear 'sandwich formula' type propagation of uncertainty onto the selected benchmarks. This allows us to draw some broad conclusions about the relative merits of selecting a technique with either full, half or zero degree of Monte Carlo simulation
© J. Dyrda et al., published by EDP Sciences, 2018
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.