Regular Article

Development of TopMC 1.0 for nuclear technology applications

¹ SuperSafety Science & Technology Co., Ltd., Hefei, 231600, C.R. China
² International Academy of Neutron Science (Hefei), Hefei, 231605, C.R. China
³ International Academy of Neutron Science, Qingdao, 266199, C.R. China
⁴ International Academy of Neutron Science (Chongqing), Chongqing, 401331, C.R. China
⁵ Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, 230031, C.R. China
⁶ University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, C.R. China

^* e-mail: jieqiong.jiang@fds.org.cn

Received: 28 June 2024
Received in final form: 20 November 2024
Accepted: 3 December 2024
Published online: 6 February 2025

Abstract

Particle transport plays an important role in nuclear technology applications. As a generalized methodology, Monte Carlo is widely employed for particle transport. We investigated several key difficulties in the field, specifically addressing aspects like voxel modeling, coupled photon-electron transportation, and advanced pulse height tallying methodologies. We have developed some essential technologies to enhance the capabilities of the Multi-functional Program for Neutronics Calculation, Nuclear Design and Safety Evaluation (TopMC). This contribution presents the progress in TopMC’s R&D, including the voxel model establishment based on medical image data and fast particle tracking method, an electron transport mechanism grounded in the condensed history approach, and a variance reduction strategy to improve the efficiency of pulse height tallies. Moreover, a series of applications in the nuclear technology field were used to validate and verify TopMC, demonstrating its accuracy and efficiency. TopMC can be applied in particle transport of Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT), nuclear logging, gamma radiation detection systems, electron accelerator, etc.