SUMMARY

The objective of this research is to develop a new 3-D radiation transport method to be used in reactor analysis for reactors which utilize hexagonal geometry in their design. Past research at Georgia Tech has developed a method to determine the eigenvalue and power profile of light and heavy water reactors which are built using Cartesian geometry; this method has since been extended to two-dimensional hexagonal geometry. This is a novel transport method which uses coarse meshes to solve full-core reactor problems. It has proven effective in solving heterogeneous problems, as it uses pure transport without homogenizing any regions within the core or resorting to diffusion approximations. It has been shown to reach a solution faster than traditional Monte Carlo and fine mesh methods while calculating an accurate solution. However, for use in solving realistic reactor problems in cores exhibiting hexagonal geometry, it is necessary to extend the capabilities of this method to three dimensions. It is proposed that this research be conducted and addressed in this dissertation.