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Post Conference Report

American Nuclear Society (ANS) National Meeting

2013 Winter Meeting and Technology Expo

Attendee :Topan Setiadipura

D3 Graduate Student at Obara Laboratory

Nuclear Engineering Department

Tokyo Insitutute of Technology

Date(s) of travel and conference:

November 9 th ,2013 travel from Narita Tokyo to Reagan Airport Washington D.C via the MinneapolisAirport.

November 10-14, 2013 ANS Winter Meeting and Technology Expo

November 15 th , 2013 travel from Reagan Airport Washington D.C. to Narita Tokyo via Detroit Airport.

Accommodation in Washington D.C:

Days-Inn Hotel, 4400 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC.

(Two station by subway train to the Conference venue).

Main Purposes of the travel:

- Deliver a presentation on Attendee`s research entitled `Development of a Monte Carlo basedPebble Bed Reactor Fuel Management Code`.

- Getting information, knowledge, and networking from other`s presenter related with Attendee`sfield of research in particular, or in the field of Nuclear Reactor Engineering in general.

Attendee`s General Impression on the Conference:

It was a very nice experience to attend such an important conference in the field of nuclear engineering.

Besides the opportunity to give presentation on my doctoral research and got some feedbacks from theother researchers, in this conference I also met and have personal discussion with certain expert in thefield of nuclear reactor engineering. I hope this experience useful for my career in the field of nuclearengineering in term of motivations to grow as a researcher in this field, knowledge and information thatI got from the conference about some particular research or project in nuclear engineering, and networkwith other students or experts in the field. I express my huge gratitude to Prof. Hiroshi Ujita asrepresentation of HITACHI for the sponsorship to attend the conference, and also to Prof. Toru Obara asmy research supervisor.

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On Attendee`s Presentation:

My presentation entitled `Development of a Monte Carlo based Pebble Bed Reactor Fuel ManagementCode`. It include in the Advance Modeling and Simulation in Reactor Physics session at Wednesdaymorning (November 13 th ,2013) which chaired by Prof. Tunc Aldemir from Ohio State University.

There are some comments and questions about my presentation. Prof. Akio Yamamato from NagoyaUniversity ask about the changing of effective multiplication factor and nuclide density by changing theheight of axial region. To answer that question I again explain more detail about how the neutrontransport and depletion calculation perform in the code. In the calculation, neutron flux and nuclidedensities are homogenized for each region which made the dimension of the region might affect theresults until we get a small enough dimension to make the change of the results negligible.

Prof. Tunc Aldemir also ask about the option to use Once-Through-Then-Out (OTTO) which heconsidered not so effective to burn the fuel compare to other cycle in pebble bed reactor (i.e. multi passcycle). To answer this question, I reviewed again the advantageous of OTTO cycle in particular thesimplification of the reactor operation. And the burnup capability is an object to be improved in furtherresearch using this developed code.

Outside the formal conference session, I have also the opportunity to discuss my research with someexperts. Prof. Andrew Kadak, former MIT Professor which have experiences in pebble bed research, givea good appreciation about the research and remark that it is important to have a more accurate toolsfor the pebble bed analysis compare to the commonly used code in this field which still used a roughapproximation such as the diffusion method for the neutron transport simulation. Discussion aboutMonte Carlo code with Dr.Jaako Leppanen, researcher at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland whodeveloped of Monte Carlo code SERPENT, was also interesting. We discuss the computing time problemwith Monte Carlo method and how the parallel computing development in SERPENT and other MonteCarlo codes. However, the statistical geometry modelling and the related random walk algorithm inMVP-BURN code is still the most effective method to model the double heterogeneity of the pebble bed

reactor and still not yet applied in other code.

On Attended Sessions:

There are many interesting sessions and presentations, below are some sessions or presentationsparticularly followed and interesting for me. I divided the sessions into following three categories:

1. Non-technical sessionsThis sessions include the ANS President`s Reception as the opening of the conference at Sundaynight. In the same hall there was also ANS Technology EXPO from many company and researchinstitute in nuclear engineering field. It was a good opportunity to get to know many people, otherstudents and experts, who attend the conference.The same event and atmosphere also continue in the Luncheon event at Monday noon. It was agood opportunity to browse more on the expo from the research institutes and companies such asthe Idaho National Lab., Argonne National Lab., Oak Ridge National Lab., Mitsubishi, KHNP andothers.

2. Techno-historical SessionsThis ANS winter meeting is also the celebration of 75 years of nuclear fission. In addition, theopening day of the conference is also the Veteran Day for the American. Many sessions have thesense of historical view of the nuclear fission development in the past and the future policy in theUnited States. This session include:

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- Opening Plenary Session: the 75 th Anniversary of the Discovery of Nuclear Fission (Mondaymorning). Inviting many people who have the experience and still being the person in charge forthe policy maker.

- ANS President`s Special Session: On the path to fission`s Centennial and Beyond (Monday,after lunch).

- Nuclear Fission: 75-Year Anniversary (Wednesday, November 13 th at 4pm). Inviting the EugeneP.Wigner Reactor Physics Award winner, Prof. Augusto Gandini, to give highlight of historically-based generalized perturbation theory methodology. Also Phillip Finck from INL, Mujid Kazimifrom MIT, Yoshiaki Oka from Waseda Univ., Jean-Pierre West from EDF France to talk about theresearch in their institution with the history-perspective.

3. Technical sessionsTechnical sessions include sessions covering the ongoing research and its current achievement.Technical sessions followed by me are as follow :- Current Issues in Computational Methods : Convergence What is it ? [Monday, 3pm]

Interesting discussion about the problem of `convergence`, when to declare that the simulationby iterative method is success and ready to be stop and give the answer, presented by experts inthe field of deterministic method and Monte Carlo method.

- Deterministic and Stochastic Methods for Eigenvalue Computations: A Retrospective andProspective Look [Monday, 4:35pm]

This sessions focus on the eigen value computations. Interesting presentation about the work ofEnrico Fermi in this particular field was given by P. Ravetto from Politecnico di Torino Italy.History, recent progress, and tips for future development for the Monte Carlo Criticalitycalculation was given by Forrest Brown from Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Pictures : Prof. PRavetto giving presentation (right), One of presentation page by F. Brown (left)).

- Transport Method: General [Tuesday, 8am]Many presentations about the Monte Carlo method and deterministic transport methoddevelopments are given in this session. For instance the convergence rates improvement inMonte Carlo simulation using stratified sampling by Alex R. Long from Oregon State University,the use of Kernel Density Estimator as the tallying method in Monte Carlo simulation by TimothyP. Burke from Univ. of Michigan.

- Use of CAD in Nuclear Shielding and Criticality Codes [Tuesday, 1pm]This sessions include many presentation about the CAD improvement in different Monte Carlocodes which able to improve the overall computation time of Monte Carlo simulation forcomplex geometry. Particular CAD module presented in this session for instance the FluDAG danDAGMCNP from Univ. of Wisconsin Madison, McCAD from Karslruhe Institute of TechnologyGermany.

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- Update on DOE IRP Project: Integral Inherently Safe Light Water Reactors (I2S-LWR) [Tuesday,7pm]This sessions discuss about the project lead by Georgia Tech. to develop an Integral Safe LightWater Reactor. Basically the design would have the safety capability same as the common smallreactor but higher power. The presentation include a multidisciplinary team which joint theproject for instance the general core design given by Prof. Bojan Petrovic from Georgia Tech, thefuel and balance-of-plant part given by the Westinghouse researcher, the I&C aspect by Prof.Belle Upadhyaya form Univ. of Tenesse, design of the pool for the irradiated fuel by AliHaghighat from Virginia Tech., and the thermal hydraulic design by Prof. Wang from Univ. ofMichigan.This sessions is one of the most interesting sessions for me because it give a more completepicture one nuclear reactor development project.

- Advanced Modeling and Simulation in Reactor [Wednesday, 8am]This session include my own presentation, basically focus on the modeling and simulation inreactor physics. There are presentations about two different Monte Carlo codes from twoChinese institutions, the JMCT and SuperMC codes. Among other presentation, include theRossi-alpha distribution calculation using CUDA parallel computing platform by A. Talamo from

ANL.- Reactor Physics Analysis Methods-II [Wednesday, 1pm]

Among the presentation given in this session in particularly I was interested to the presentationabout the OpenMC code development given by Bryan Herman from MIT.

- Advanced/ Gen-IV Reactors-I [Thursday, 8am]There are many presentations givenabout the High Temperature Salt-Cooled Reactor development at MITlead by Prof. Charles W. Forsberg.Including the optimum heat-exchangerdesign, external breakthrough

technology, the licensing strategy, andthe commercialization approaches andchallenges. Presentation about SuperFast Reactor also given in this session bySutanto, my colleague in BATANIndonesia who is currently a doctoralstudent in Waseda University. [Picture:One of Presentation Page by Prof.Charles W. Forsberg]

- Reactor System and Advanced Measurement [ Thursday, 1pm]Some other presentations about the Salt-cooled HTR were given in this session. It include thepreliminary fission product behavior and fuel performance modeling in the Flouride Salt-CooledHTR given by John D. Stempien.

On Washington D.C. city-trip:

The trip was an opportunity for me to walk around and enjoy the city of Washington DC. On Sunday, Iwalked around the city including the White House, World War II Memorial, Korean War Memorial,Lincoln Memorial, Roosevelt Memorial, Jefferson Memorial and The Holocaust Museum. On Thursdaynight, I also walked around the Capitol Hill and Washington Tower.

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