Monte Carlo criticality calculations accelerated by a growing neutron population

We propose a fission source convergence acceleration method for Monte Carlo criticality simulation. As the efficiency of Monte Carlo criticality simulations is sensitive to the selected neutron population size, the method attempts to achieve the acceleration via on-the-fly control of the neutron population size. The neutron population size is gradually increased over successive criticality cycles so that the fission source bias amounts to a specific fraction of the total error in the cumulative fission source. An optimal setting then gives a reasonably small neutron population size, allowing for an efficient source iteration; at the same time the neutron population size is chosen large enough to ensure a sufficiently small source bias, such that does not limit accuracy of the simulation.