Seminar: A New Paradigm for Particle Transport Simulation - The MRT Methodology and the RAPID Code System

Alireza Haghighat, Professor & Director of Nuclear Engineering Program, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Abstract

The talk introduces the audience to the novel Multi-stage, Response-function Transport (MRT) methodology, which enables solving complex and large radiation transport problems in real time!

It elaborates on the RAPID (Real-time Analysis for Particle-transport In-situ Detection) code system and its steady-state and transient algorithms that are developed based on the MRT methodology. It presents the results of benchmarking (calculation & experiment) of its critical/subcritical and detector response algorithms for spent fuel pools, spent fuel casks, and/or reactor cores (power and research), and its burnup and reactor kinetics algorithms for test problems.

Additionally, the talk introduces the VRS-RAPID web application that is a novel multi-user virtual reality system (VRS) for input preparation, real-time simulation, and output processing and visualization in a virtual environment.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Haghighat is professor and Director of the Virginia Tech Nuclear Engineering Program, Mechanical Engineering Department. He is also the Director of Nuclear Science and Engineering Lab (NSEL) and the Mechanical Engineering Program at the National Capital Region (NCR) Campus. He has contributed to a new graduate Certificate in Nuclear Science, Technology and Policy (NSTEP), and an accelerated master of engineering in nuclear engineering for the graduating midshipmen from the US Naval Academy. Prof. Haghighat is the former (2001-2009) Chair of the University of Florida (UF) Nuclear & Radiological Engineering (NRE) Department and former (2008-2010) Director of UF Training Reactor (UFTR). Prior to Florida, He was a faculty member at Penn State from 1986 to 2001.

He is a fellow of the American Nuclear Society (ANS), recipient of the 2011 Radiation Protection Shielding Division’s Professional Excellence Award, and recipient of the recognition award from Office of Global Threat Reduction for his leadership & contributions to design and analysis for the UFTR HEU to LEU fuel conversion, 2009.

He leads the Virginia Tech Theory Transport Group (VT3G). Over the past 32 years, Prof. Haghighat has been involved in the development of new particle transport methodologies and large computer codes for modeling and simulation of nuclear systems including reactors, nuclear security and safeguards systems and medical devices. His efforts have resulted in the development of PENTRAN, A3MCNP, TITAN, INSPCT-s, AIMS, TITAN-IR, and RAPID & VRS-RAPID.

He has published over 250, a textbook entitled ‘Monte Carlo Methods for Particle Transport’, CRC Press Taylor & Francis Group; currently, and is working on the 2nd edition of this book.

He is an active member of the American Nuclear Society and has served in various leadership positions. He served as the Chair of NEDHO (Nuclear Engineering Department Heads Organization). He is the founding Chairman and the current vice-chairman of the Board of the Virginia Nuclear Energy Consortium (VNEC) nonprofit organization.