Development of Python Based Program to Generate Graphical Output of Fluxes and Reaction Rates from 1-D Radiation Transport Code, ANISN

Abstract

ANISN is radiation transport code developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) back in 1967 using FORTRAN IV as a programming language. The code performs neutron and gamma transport in one dimensional plane, spherical and cylinder geometry and solves 1-d linear Boltzmann transport equation to estimate particle flux and reaction rates like tritium production, nuclear heating, radiation damage etc. ANISN code being so old is still attractive and useful in many possible

applications such as, for fast radiation transport providing complete flux distribu- tions. The code uses text based input file and generates a text based output file

which contains the desired nuclear responses besides lots of other details. It is often a tedious and error prone exercise to prepare the input files which contain several important parameters of the radiation transport calculation like reactor geometry,

material specification, number of volumetric zones, etc. These parameters are repre- sented in the form of numerical data and each refers to certain actions or commands

which are responsible for the calculation of radiation transport and in turn affects nuclear analysis. The manual extraction of the desired nuclear responses from the set of output files takes too much efforts from the nuclear analyst. This forces the nuclear analyst to spend a lot of his time on preparation of input file and extracting the desired responses in publishable format. The motivation for this work is to facilitate the use of ANISN code developed in 60s and 70s, which is in decline as compared to the more and more widely used

Monte Carlo codes. It is often very convenient, especially for the new users per- forming parametric studies, to have the capability of calculating and displaying the

various spatial neutron and gamma reaction rates. The main motto of this project is to provide an end-to-end solution in the form of an interactive application, which encompasses preparation of input files, execution of ANISN code, extraction of the desired nuclear responses from the output files and generate graphical representation of these responses after post-processing based on the users requirement.