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Research
Work
Prof. John R. White
I have
been involved in a variety of research activities during my 25+
years in the nuclear field. Most of my work, and the involvement
of my students, have been associated with the broad field of computational
reactor physics -- with a good mix of methods development and application.
A good overview of the topics and the various papers, reports, and
student theses that have documented this research can be obtained
from a quick review of the information available via the Curriculum
Vitae link.
A slightly
more organized and more detailed treatment of four key application
areas is also given here, since much of my research can be categorized
into one of these four general areas, as follows:
I.
Computational Support for the UMLRR
II. Activation Analysis Methods and Applications
III. General Reactor Physics and Shielding
Applications
IV. Perturbation Theory Methods and Applications
Much
of my recent work over the last 5-8 years has focused on the first
two topic areas, and a fair amount of detail can be obtained on
these subjects by following the appropriate links to full versions
of many of the papers and reports that were produced as part of
these works. For example, for those interested in computer modeling
of nuclear systems, the sequence
of
materials associated with the computational support for the UMass-Lowell
research reactor (UMLRR) should be especially useful, since they
provide lots of information about the modeling and analysis of a
real reactor. In particular, the UMLRR is used extensively as an
educational tool for our students in the Nuclear Programs at UMass-Lowell
-- and the computer modeling and analysis information available
here is often used to illustrate a variety of basic modeling concepts
and to train the students in the use of some common reactor physics
analysis tools (SCALE, VENTURE, DORT/TORT, MCNP, etc.).
For
completeness, I have also included some selected material from my
research during the 1980-1995 period, where much of my research
work was focused on general radiation transport analyses and core
physics studies or on the subject of perturbation theory methods
and applications (Topics III and IV from the above list). The last
topic, in particular, is a favorite of mine, since much of my early
work (and my MS and PhD theses) was related to the development and
application of perturbation theory methods. Unfortunately, many
of these early works are not readily available in electronic format,
so the list of available materials with a full
version tag is rather limited -- sorry!!!
In
any case, hopefully some of the stuff available here will be useful
both to the seasoned practitioner and to the novice in the field
of reactor physics. I certainly had a lot of fun with these projects
and I learned a lot of practical reactor physics while generating
these works -- I hope you enjoy!!!
Special
Note: I typically use Matlab to generate most of the
plots for my papers and reports, MS Word to do the document processing,
MathType to do the equation processing, and Adobe Acrobat to convert
the *.doc files into *.pdf files. Unfortunately, compatibility issues
among the various codes and among different versions of the same
code have caused me many headaches over the years. What looks great
in Matlab might be corrupted in Word, and what looks good in Word
may be ugly or only half visible in the pdf version. This compatibility
issue is apparent in many of the full version pdf files available
from the links given above -- with many Matlab-generated plots having
corrupted titles and others having overall poor quality/visibility
in some of the pdf files. Unfortunately, some of the plots could
not be re-generated and, even if they could be, it was simply too
much work to re-create all the data needed to correct the affected
plots. Thus, I have included the material "as is", and
apologize ahead of time for the poor quality. In most cases, the
substance of the data is still apparent, so the information is still
useable. Hopefully, the poor quality will not be too much of a distraction
-- since there really is a lot of good stuff here!!! Sorry
Last
updated by Prof. John R. White (January 2003)
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