SUMMARY

The Coarse Mesh Radiation Transport (COMET) method is a neutron transport solver for reactor eigenvalue problems that has been proven to generate accurate and efficient results for various nuclear reactor cores. Firmly established as a viable method for generating solutions to whole-core reactor problems, the natural “next step” in utilizing the COMET method is to introduce depletion analysis. This research aims to develop an efficient burnup capability using the matrix exponential method to couple with the COMET method. The Monte Carlo response function generator being developed concurrently in another Ph.D. project in the Computational Reactors and Medical Physics (CRMP) lab at Georgia Tech will serve as the starting point for a COMET method-based lattice depletion code. The computational efficiency of the COMET method will enable assembly-level lattice depletion calculations to be performed faster while maintaining the accuracy needed in depletion analysis.