Seminar: Overview of Efficient and Accurate Whole Core Neutronics Modeling & Simulation Methods and Challenges

Dr. Farzad Rahnema, Georgia Tech

All dates for this event occur in the past.

E141 Scott Lab
E141 Scott Lab
201 W. 19th Ave.
Columbus, OH 43210
United States

This seminar will provide a high level overview of current and advanced methods. Some of the challenges associated with these methods for modeling and simulation of reactor core neutronics will be discussed. As an example, issues with converging stochastic transport solutions for numerical benchmarking will be highlighted.  The seminar will be concluded by a brief description of COMET, a hybrid stochastic and deterministic radiation transport code developed at Georgia Tech. Through a broad class of whole core benchmark problems, COMET’s accuracy, computational efficiency, and broad applicability will be demonstrated.  

About the Speaker

Dr. Rahnema is a Georgia Power Company Distinguished Professor of Nuclear Engineering and the Director of the Computational Reactor and Medical Physics (CRMP) Laboratory at Georgia Institute of Technology. Since 2005, he has also held an appointment as an Adjunct Professor of Radiation Oncology at the Emory University School of Medicine.

Dr. Rahnema received his PhD in nuclear engineering from the University of California–Los Angeles (UCLA). He joined Georgia Tech in 1992 and was at General Electric Nuclear Energy before then. His responsibility included GE’s 3-D Nuclear/Thermal Hydraulics BWR Core Simulator PANACEA used for design, monitoring and prediction of BWR cores. He has published over 200 refereed technical articles.

Dr. Rahnema is a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society (ANS), the Chair of the Honors and Award Committee of the ANS Mathematics and Computation Division (MCD), an Advisory Editor of Annals of Nuclear Energy, and a member of the External Advisory Board of the Ohio State University Nuclear Engineering Program. He served as the Chair of the Nuclear & Radiological Engineering and Medical Physics Programs at Georgia Institute of Technology (7/2003-6/2016), Chair of the MCD (2 times) and the Reactor Physics Divisions (RPD), and the founding Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Southeast Universities Nuclear Reactors Institute for Science and Education (SUNRISE).

His research interest is in the areas of radiation transport and reactor physics methods and code development with applications to reactor core analysis, nuclear security, and computational medical physics.

Hosted by Professor Marat Khafizov