Doctoral seminars

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Friday, May 20th 2010, 10:30-11:30 in Celestijnenlaan 200A, 03.112, 3001 Leuven-Heverlee

Solving the neutron transport equation, a multi-scale challenge

by Gert Van den Eynde, SCK, Mol

The neutron transport equation is the master equation to study the heart of a nuclear reactor: the reactor core. The neutron transport equation, or sometimes also called the Boltzmann equation, predicts the average behavior of neutrons in a medium. Solving this equation gives us the neutron density in the medium and this allows us to calculate the criticality of the reactor (the balance between neutron loss and neutron production). This equation can be solved using two “schools” of methods: deterministic methods (i.e. discretization methods) and stochastic methods (i.e. Monte Carlo methods). This seminar will give an overview of both schools (and the different methods applied therein), their advantages and disadvantages. The aim of this seminar is to trigger collaboration between reactor physicists from SCK•CEN and the numerical algorithm developers at Computer Science, KULeuven.

About the speaker: Dr. Ir. Gert Van den Eynde is the head of the Expert Group Nuclear Systems’ Physics at SCK•CEN, the Belgian nuclear research center. He holds a Master degree in Engineering in Computer Science, a Master degree in nuclear engineering and a PhD in nuclear engineering. He is involved in the MYRRHA project since 1999 and was task leader in the FP6 IP-EUROTRANS for the XT-ADS core design. His main fields of research are computational methods for neutron transport and reactor core modeling and analysis. He is coordinator of the FP7 ARCAS project.