1. NAME and TITLE of CODE PACKAGE
MONTEBURNS 1.0: An Automated, Multi-Step Monte Carlo Burnup Code Syste

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

3. CODING LANGUAGE and COMPUTER 
Fortran 77 and Perl; will work on Sun Solaris and WindowsNT PC systems; Unix HP and VMS
systems are not yet fully tested (P00455MNYCP01).

4. NATURE OF PROBLEM SOLVED 
MONTEBURNS calculates coupled neutronic/isotopic results for nuclear systems. It is a 
fully automated tool that links the Monte Carlo transport code CCC-700/MCNP4C with the 
radioactive decay and burnup code CCC-371/ORIGEN2.1. MCNP, ORIGEN2.1 and Perl are 
required software and are NOT included in this distribution. This release was tested 
with MCNP4A, MCNP4B, and MCNP4C. MONTEBURNS produces a large number of criticality and 
burnup results based on various material feed/removal specifications, power(s), and time 
intervals. 

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 a working versions of MCNP4C, 
ORIGEN2.1, and PERL; all interactions with ORIGEN2 and other calculations are performed 
by MONTEBURNS. 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). 
The included test cases ran on a Pentium II-266 in about 1 hour at RSICC.

8. COMPUTER HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS 
The code has been successfully implemented on a Sun Solaris SparcStation 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 tested and 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 
workstations and personal computers running WindowsNT. A PC executable compiled with 
Digital Developer Studio 6.0 is included. It will not 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 and can be found at: www.perl.com MONTEBURNS
has been tested with CCC-371/ORIGEN2.1 and CCC-700/MCNP4C. This code was tested at RSICC 
on a Pentium 266 MHz running WindowsNT 4.0 with SP6, on Windows2000 with SP1, and on a 
SunSparc60 running Solaris 2.6. 

10. REFERENCE
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
Included in the package are the referenced document and two (1.44MB) diskettes written 
in DOS and Unix compressed formats. The diskettes include the MONTEBURNS Fortran source, 
PC executable, Perl script, and test cases.

12. DATE of ABSTRACT 
December 1999, revised May 2001.

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