Monte Carlo criticality source convergence in a loosely coupled fuel storage system.

The fission source convergence of a very loosely coupled array of 36 fuel subassemblies with slightly non-symmetric reflection is studied. The fission source converges very slowly from a uniform guess to the fundamental mode in which about 40% of the fissions occur in one corner subassembly. Eigenvalue and fission source estimates are analyzed using a set of statistical tests similar to those used in MCNP, including the ''drift-in-mean'' test and a new drift-in-mean test using a linear fit to the cumulative estimate drift, the Shapiro-Wilk test for normality, the relative error test, and the ''1/N'' test. The normality test does not detect a drifting eigenvalue or fission source. Applied to eigenvalue estimates, the other tests generally fail to detect an unconverged solution, but they are sometimes effective when evaluating fission source distributions. None of the test provides completely reliable indication of convergence, although they can detect nonconvergence