For the last five years, the nuclear data community within NNSA has been rallied around the goal of understanding the neutronic properties of plutonium-239. Unfortunately, it is a difficult problem and we are not there yet. In fact, we have taken the problem global and engaged the broader international community [CIELO, NDS V118 p1] in helping tackle these challenging issues. But that is a story for a different day. In the meantime, this intense study has paid off in the form of many new insights in assessing the state of our knowledge. As these kinds of issues are more general than just our community, I hope that discussing them more broadly might help others in their search for solutions and all of us in pondering those unknown unknowns.
About the Speaker:
Morgan White joined the nuclear data team at LANL in X-division in 1998 as a summer student and has been part of that team ever since. As part of his doctoral thesis, Morgan implemented photo-nuclear physics in NJOY and MCNP to extend new capabilities to the radiation shielding community. Taking the advice start like you mean to continue, bringing better nuclear data and methods to users has been the focus of his work since. Morgan has been a part of developing the MCNP ACE data libraries ENDF60, LA150N, ENDF66, ACTI, ENDF70 and ENDF71 as well as many specialized libraries for specific applications. He has worked with Monte Carlo and deterministic neutronics codes as well as multi-physics applications to develop and implement extended capabilities in transport physics and tally capabilities. More recently, Morgan has crossed from simulations to the dark side and begun working with the experimental community to better understand and reduce the systematic errors in the fundamental data necessary for such simulations.
