Our criticality safety assessor Sarah recently went on a trip to Los Alamos, New Mexico. This was not inspired by the latest Oppenheimer film but rather to attend the MCNP Intermediate Training course run by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).

During the training, Sarah got to grips with using the MCNP 6 code, building advanced geometries and sources, understanding advanced outputs and was introduced to a selection of variance reduction techniques. She also came back with a few insights to the updates in the latest MCNP 6.3 release. The course was a mixture of lecture and practical content, taught by a variety of MCNP developers from LANL whose expertise and patient instruction was greatly appreciated.

There was also opportunity to discover more about the history of Los Alamos itself, from the Ancestral Pueblo peoples, through Spanish occupation (the name “Los Alamos” means “The Cottonwoods” in Spanish) and homesteaders leading to the eventual requisition of the land in support of the Manhattan Project and the later impact of the Cold War.

Now she’s back, Sarah is looking forward to implementing her learning in support of client projects.