RSICC CODE PACKAGE PSR-455

1. NAME and TITLE of CODE PACKAGE
MONTEBURNS 2.0: Automated, Multi-Step Monte Carlo Burnup Code System.

2. CONTRIBUTOR
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico.

3. CODING LANGUAGE and COMPUTER 
Fortran 77 and Perl; will work on Sun Solaris, HP Unix and WindowsNT PC systems; VMS 
systems are not yet fully tested (P00455MNYCP02).

4. NATURE OF PROBLEM SOLVED 
MONTEBURNS Version 2 calculates coupled neutronic/isotopic results for nuclear systems 
and produces a large number of criticality and burnup results based on various material 
feed/removal specifications, power(s), and time intervals. MONTEBURNS is a fully 
automated tool that links the LANL MCNP Monte Carlo transport code with a radioactive 
decay and burnup code. Highlights on changes to Version 2 are listed in the transmittal 
letter. Along with other minor improvements in MONTEBURNS Version 2, the option was 
added to use CINDER90 instead of ORIGEN2 as the depletion/decay part of the system. 
CINDER90 is a multi-group depletion code developed at LANL and is not currently 
available from RSICC. This MONTEBURNS release was tested with various combinations of 
CCC-715/MCNPX 2.4.0, CCC-710/MCNP5, CCC-700/MCNP4C, CCC-371/ORIGEN2.2, ORIGEN2.1 and 
CINDER90. Perl is required software and is not included in this distribution. MCNP, 
ORIGEN2, and CINDER90 are not included.

5. METHOD of SOLUTION
MONTEBURNS processes input from the user that specifies the system geometry, initial 
material compositions, feed/removal specifications, and other code-specific parameters. 
Various results from MCNP, ORIGEN2, and other calculations are then output successively 
as the code runs. The principle function of MONTEBURNS is to transfer one-group 
cross-section and flux values from MCNP to ORIGEN2, and then transfer the resulting 
material compositions (after irradiation and/or decay) from ORIGEN2 back to MCNP in a 
repeated, cyclic fashion (a simple predictor-corrector method is used during this 
process).

6. RESTRICTIONS or LIMITATIONS 
The basic requirement of the code is that the user have working versions of PERL, MCNP, 
and either CINDER90, ORIGEN2.1, or ORIGEN2.2. The code is fairly versatile and allows 
any number of irradiation (burn steps) to occur, up to 49 materials to be irradiated, 
and material to be added or removed at each step. More detailed information about 
limitation is in Section 8.0 of the MONTEBURNS User's Manual (LA-UR-99-4999).

7. TYPICAL RUNNING TIME 
The run time for MONTEBURNS highly depends on the complexity and run time associated 
with the MCNP input file and the number of burn steps desired. MCNP is typically run 
once for each burn step. The minimum run time should be a bit longer than the amount of 
time it takes to run MCNP for the specific input deck specified multiplied by the 
number of burn steps (however, this may be increased by certain input parameters). 
Each of the 5 test cases may take up to 1-2 hours each on a Sun Ultra 60.

8. COMPUTER HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS 
The code has been successfully implemented on a Sun Solaris SparcStation, 
HP workstation,and a Windows NT system. Further, it was designed to work on any PC or 
UNIX machine, and possibly even a VMS system (although this has not yet been fully 
testedand may require modifications).

9. COMPUTER SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS 
The main part of the code was written in Fortran 77; but the interface between MCNP, 
ORIGEN2, and monteb was written in Perl. It has been thoroughly tested on Sun Solaris 
and HP Unix workstations and on personal computers running Windows2000. A PC executable 
compiled with Digital Developer Studio Version 6.0 (Update A) under Windows 2000 is 
included. The system would require modifications to run on Windows95 or 98.

No non-standard options are necessary other than a platform that has a working version 
of MCNP and ORIGEN2.1. MCNP and ORIGEN are available from RSICC but are not included in 
the MONTEBURNS package. Perl is not included but can be downloaded; see www.perl.com. 
At RSICC, this release was tested on a Pentium IV running Windows 2000 and on an AMD 
Athlon MP 2000 PC running RedHat Linux 7 with The Portland Group compiler.

10. REFERENCES
H. R. Trellue, Transmittal letter to RSICC (September 12, 2002).
D. L. Poston, and H. R. Trellue, "User's Manual, Version 2.0 for MONTEBURNS Version 1.0,
"LA-UR-99-4999 (September 1999).

11. CONTENTS of CODE PACKAGE
The package is transmitted on a CD with PDF versions of the references listed above and 
a GNU compressed Unix tar file that includes the MONTEBURNS Fortran source, PC 
executable, Perl script, and test cases. WinZIP 8.0 or later is required to extract 
the files under Windows.

12. DATE of ABSTRACT 
December 1999, revised May 2001 and July 2003.

KEYWORDS: BURNUP; MONTE CARLO; NEUTRON; WORKSTATION; MICROCOMPUTER