Computation of Neutron Multiplicity Statistics Using Deterministic Transport

Nuclear nonproliferation efforts are supported by measurements that are capable of rapidly characterizing special nuclear materials (SNM). Neutron multiplicity counting is frequently used to estimate properties of SNM, including neutron source strength, multiplication, and generation time. Different classes of models have been used to estimate these and other properties from the measured neutron counting distribution and its statistics. This paper describes a technique to compute statistics of the neutron counting distribution using deterministic neutron transport models. This approach can be applied to rapidly analyze neutron multiplicity counting measurements without relying on the point reactor kinetics model.