• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.7
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• pp.1347-1354
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• 2020

To improve the efficiency of MC criticality calculation, an acceleration method of fission source convergence which gives an improved initial fission source is proposed. In this method, the MC global homogenization is carried out to obtain the macroscopic cross section of each material mesh, and then the nonlinear iterative solution of the SP3 equations is used to determine the fission source distribution. The calculated fission source is very close to the real fission source, which describes its space and energy distribution. This method is an automatic computation process and is tested by the C5G7 benchmark, the results show that this acceleration method is helpful to reduce the inactive cycles and overall running time.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.5
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• pp.1095-1099
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• 2017

A fission source can act as a stabilization element in coupled Monte Carlo simulations. We have observed this while studying numerical instabilities in nonlinear steady-state simulations performed by a Monte Carlo criticality solver that is coupled to a xenon feedback solver via fixed-point iteration. While fixed-point iteration is known to be numerically unstable for some problems, resulting in large spatial oscillations of the neutron flux distribution, we show that it is possible to stabilize it by reducing the number of Monte Carlo criticality cycles simulated within each iteration step. While global convergence is ensured, development of any possible numerical instability is prevented by not allowing the fission source to converge fully within a single iteration step, which is achieved by setting a small number of criticality cycles per iteration step. Moreover, under these conditions, the fission source may converge even faster than in criticality calculations with no feedback, as we demonstrate in our numerical test simulations.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 2005.05a
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• pp.151-152
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• 2005

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.1428-1438
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• 2023

A novel Fission Diffusion Synthetic Acceleration (FDSA) method is developed and implemented as a part of a hybrid neutronics method for source convergence acceleration and variance reduction in Monte Carlo (MC) criticality calculations. The acceleration of the MC calculation stems from constructing a synthetic operator and solving a low-order problem using information obtained from previous MC calculations. By applying the P₁ approximation, two correction terms, one for the scalar flux and the other for the current, can be solved in the low-order problem and applied to the transport solution. A variety of one-dimensional (1-D) and two-dimensional (2-D) numerical tests are constructed to demonstrate the performance of FDSA in comparison with the standalone MC method and the coupled MC and Coarse Mesh Finite Difference (MC-CMFD) method on both intended purposes. The comparison results show that the acceleration by a factor of 3-10 can be expected for source convergence and the reduction in MC variance is comparable to CMFD in both slab and full core geometries, although the effectiveness of such hybrid methods is limited to systems with small dominance ratios.

• The Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.203-213
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• 2018

Tumor undergo uncontrolled, excessive proliferation leads to hypoxic microenvironment. To fulfill their demand for nutrient, and oxygen, tumor angiogenesis is required. Endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) have been known to the main source of angiogenesis because of their potential to differentiation into endothelial cells. Therefore, understanding the mechanism of EPC-mediated angiogenesis in hypoxia is critical for development of cancer therapy. Recently, mitochondrial dynamics has emerged as a critical mechanism for cellular function and differentiation under hypoxic conditions. However, the role of mitochondrial dynamics in hypoxia-induced angiogenesis remains to be elucidated. In this study, we demonstrated that hypoxia-induced mitochondrial fission accelerates EPCs bioactivities. We first investigated the effect of hypoxia on EPC-mediated angiogenesis. Cell migration, invasion, and tube formation was significantly increased under hypoxic conditions; expression of EPC surface markers was unchanged. And mitochondrial fission was induced by hypoxia time-dependent manner. We found that hypoxia-induced mitochondrial fission was triggered by dynamin-related protein Drp1, specifically, phosphorylated DRP1 at Ser637, a suppression marker for mitochondrial fission, was impaired in hypoxia time-dependent manner. To confirm the role of DRP1 in EPC-mediated angiogenesis, we analyzed cell bioactivities using Mdivi-1, a selective DRP1 inhibitor, and DRP1 siRNA. DRP1 silencing or Mdivi-1 treatment dramatically reduced cell migration, invasion, and tube formation in EPCs, but the expression of EPC surface markers was unchanged. In conclusion, we uncovered a novel role of mitochondrial fission in hypoxia-induced angiogenesis. Therefore, we suggest that specific modulation of DRP1-mediated mitochondrial dynamics may be a potential therapeutic strategy in EPC-mediated tumor angiogenesis.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.381-390
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• 2009

This article provides selects of outstanding problems in computational neutron transport, with some suggested approaches thereto, as follows: i) ray effect in discrete ordinates method, ii) diffusion synthetic acceleration in strongly heterogeneous problems, iii) method of characteristics extension to three-dimensional geometry, iv) fission source and $k_{eff}$ convergence in Monte Carlo, v) depletion in Monte Carlo, vi) nuclear data evaluation, and vii) uncertainty estimation, including covariance data.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.1125-1134
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• 2017

In this paper, we present a new multilevel in space and energy diffusion (MSED) method for solving multigroup diffusion eigenvalue problems. The MSED method can be described as a PI scheme with three additional features: (1) a grey (one-group) diffusion equation used to efficiently converge the fission source and eigenvalue, (2) a space-dependent Wielandt shift technique used to reduce the number of PIs required, and (3) a multigrid-in-space linear solver for the linear solves required by each PI step. In MSED, the convergence of the solution of the multigroup diffusion eigenvalue problem is accelerated by performing work on lower-order equations with only one group and/or coarser spatial grids. Results from several Fourier analyses and a one-dimensional test code are provided to verify the efficiency of the MSED method and to justify the incorporation of the grey diffusion equation and the multigrid linear solver. These results highlight the potential efficiency of the MSED method as a solver for multidimensional multigroup diffusion eigenvalue problems, and they serve as a proof of principle for future work. Our ultimate goal is to implement the MSED method as an efficient solver for the two-dimensional/three-dimensional coarse mesh finite difference diffusion system in the Michigan parallel characteristics transport code. The work in this paper represents a necessary step towards that goal.