SUMMARY

The major emphasis of this research focuses on the development and implementation of transport solution optimization methods for 3-D discrete ordinates (Sn) transport. The first goal is to develop a 3-D parallel block adaptive diffusion solver which will accelerate the 3-D Sn solution by providing a more representative starting flux profile and eigenvalue guess compared with the flat flux approximation. Furthermore, an automatically optimized cross section tool will be developed for producing the minimized group structure for multigroup transport calculations with a prescribed accuracy metric. Therefore, the final product will provide the optimum broad energy group structure and appropriate weighting functions using a combination of forward and adjoint transport solutions from a fine group calculation. Finally, I will investigate exploiting time dependent methods using the 3-D Sn code PENTRAN.