Monte Carlo applications at Hanford Engineering Development Laboratory

Twenty applications of neutron and photon transport with Monte Carlo have been described to give an overview of the current effort at HEDL. A satisfaction factor was defined which quantitatively assigns an overall return for each calculation relative to the investment in machine time and expenditure of manpower. Low satisfaction factors are frequently encountered in the calculations. Usually this is due to limitations in execution rates of present day computers, but sometimes a low satisfaction factor is due to computer code limitations, calendar time constraints, or inadequacy of the nuclear data base. Present day computer codes have taken some of the burden off of the user. Nevertheless, it is highly desirable for the engineer using the computer code to have an understanding of particle transport including some intuition for the problems being solved, to understand the construction of sources for the random walk, to understand the interpretation of tallies made by the code, and to have a basic understanding of elementary biasing techniques