The fundamental motivation for the research presented in this dissertation was the need to development a more accurate prediction method for characterization of mixed radiation fields around medical electron accelerators (MEAs). Specifically, a model is developed for simulation of neutron and other particle production from photonuclear reactions and incorporated in the Monte Carlo N-Particle (MCNP) radiation transport code. This extension of the capability within the MCNP code provides for the more accurate assessment of the mixed radiation fields. The Nuclear Theory and Applications group of the Los Alamos National Laboratory has recently provided first-of-a-kind evaluated photonuclear data for a select group of isotopes. These data provide the reaction probabilities as functions of incident photon energy with angular and energy distribution information for all reaction products. The availability of these data is the cornerstone of the new methodology for state-of-the-art mutually coupled photon-neutron transport simulations. The dissertation includes details of the model development and implementation necessary to use the new photonuclear data within MCNP simulations. A new data format has been developed to include tabular photonuclear data. Data are processed from the Evaluated Nuclear Data Format (ENDF) to the new class ''u'' A Compact ENDF (ACE) format using a standalone processing …

None

None

In this work, we develop a new spatial discretization scheme that may be used to numerically solve the neutron transport equation. This new discretization extends the family of corner balance spatial discretizations to include spatial grids of arbitrary polyhedra. This scheme enforces balance on subcell volumes called corners. It produces a lower triangular matrix for sweeping, is algebraically linear, is non-negative in a source-free absorber, and produces a robust and accurate solution in thick diffusive regions. Using an asymptotic analysis, we design the scheme so that in thick diffusive regions it will attain the same solution as an accurate polyhedral diffusion discretization. We then refine the approximations in the scheme to reduce numerical diffusion in vacuums, and we attempt to capture a second order truncation error. After we develop this Upstream Corner Balance Linear (UCBL) discretization we analyze its characteristics in several limits. We complete a full diffusion limit analysis showing that we capture the desired diffusion discretization in optically thick and highly scattering media. We review the upstream and linear properties of our discretization and then demonstrate that our scheme captures strictly non-negative solutions in source-free purely absorbing media. We then demonstrate the minimization of numerical diffusion of a …