Neutron transport in WIMS by the characteristics method

The common methods of solving the neutron transport equation in reactor assembly geometries involve some geometric approximation. The standard differential transport methods and diffusion methods rely on pin-cell smearing, and transmission probability methods make approximations to the boundary fluxes linking pin cells. Integral transport methods (collision probabilities) can cope with pin geometries by numerical integration but require excessive computing times that increase with the square of the number of regions. The characteristics method in WIMS, known as CACTUS, solves the differential transport equation by a numerical tracking technique whose accuracy is limited only by computing resources; in its WIMS implementation it can handle any pin-type geometry without the need for preliminary spatial smearing