The MCNP<sup>®</sup>6 code: A decade of progress
After several years of effort involved in merging the Los Alamos National Laboratory MCNP5 and MCNPX codes, in 2013 the first production release of version 6 of the Monte Carlo N-Particle ® , or MCNP ® , code MCNP6.1 was distributed publicly. Since then, three significant releases have been issued: MCNP6.1.1beta in 2014, MCNP6.2 in 2018, and MCNP6.3 in 2023. While each release always contains new features, code enhancements, and bug fixes, each version has had a different primary focus, ranging from improved calculational efficiency to new powerful utilities and tools, to software modernization of the code base. With all that has been learned over the first decade of the MCNP6 code, continuous progress is being made toward a modernized, general-purpose Monte Carlo radiation transport code that remains a trusted resource for the global community of practitioners. This paper describes these first 10+ years of the MCNP6 code and its continually improving data libraries, and gives some insight into how the next decade is expected to unfold.
Authors
- Jerawan Armstrong (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4681-1330)
- Jeremy Sweezy (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4847-470X)
- Jeffrey Bull (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3864-2503)
- Joel Kulesza (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2669-6339)
- Simon Bolding (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8296-1304)
- Sriram Swaminarayan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1809-5231)
- Pablo Vaquer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-2608-8047)
- C. G. Frederick
- Alexander Clark (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6013-2513)
- T. M. Kelley (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4973-4430)
- Colin Weaver (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6333-4185)
- Colin Josey (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3210-5806)
- Laura Casswell
- Michael Lively (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6511-9852)
- Michael Rising (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8712-2427)
- Jesse Giron (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0118-5951)
- Anthony Zukaitis
- R.A. Forster
- Robert Little (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3908-2475)
- F. S. Jones
Institutions
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- EPJ Nuclear Sciences & Technologies
- Published
- 2025-01-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1051/epjn/2025003
- Citations
- 10
- Primary Topic
- Nuclear reactor physics and engineering
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 49.94
Funders
- U.S. Department of Energy
- National Nuclear Security Administration
- Los Alamos National Laboratory