NECP-MCX: A hybrid Monte-Carlo-Deterministic particle-transport code for the simulation of deep-penetration problems

A new particle-transport code NECP-MCX has been developed by Nuclear Engineering Computational Physics (NECP) laboratory of Xi'an Jiaotong University. NECP-MCX is aimed at the simulation of deep-penetration problems, including reactor radiation-shielding calculation, fusion reactor blanket calculation, etc. These problems are challenging for the Monte Carlo (MC) method, which needs a huge number of particles to obtain reliable results. For the problems mentioned above, it is also challenging for the deterministic method to obtain results with high precision due to discretization errors. To overcome these challenges, NECP-MCX has been developed based on a hybrid Monte-Carlo-Deterministic method from scratch. The hybrid Monte-Carlo-Deterministic method utilizes the deterministic method to generate consistent mesh-based weight-window and source-biasing parameters for the MC method to reduce variance. The numerical results demonstrate that NECP-MCX is able to simulate deep-penetration problems with higher efficiency compared to the conventional MC codes.