ANSWERS

Overview

ANSWERS provides Monte Carlo software tools for nuclear criticality safety and reactor physics analysis.

  • MCBEND 10a_ru1, 11a_ru0
  • MONK 12b_ru0, 12b_ru_mpi, 10a_ru0, 10a_ru0_x64, 10b_ru0_x64
  • WIMS 11a_dv10(serial), 11a_dv10(mpi)
  • WIMS 11b_dv11(serial), 11a_dv11(mpi)
  • WIMS 11b_dv14(mpi)
  • VisualWorkshop 3b_ru0
  • VisualWorkshop 4a_ru0
  • VisualWorkshop 5a_ru0

The following products are available upon request (we have not written modulefiles for these as they are rarely used. If you use them on Redqueen you may set up their environment manually. Please contact us if you require a modulefile for these products).

  • MONK 9a_ru1
  • WIMS 9a_ru1
  • vista-ray3a ru0
  • visage5a_ru0
  • launchpad2a_ru0
  • WimsBuilder 2a_ru0, 3a_ru0

Restrictions on use

Access to this software is restricted to a specific research group. Please contact us for more information.

Set up procedure

To access the software you must first load one of the following modulefiles:

# MONK
module load apps/binapps/answers/monk/12b_ru0_mpi     # 64bit parallel MPI version
module load apps/binapps/answers/monk/12b_ru0         # 64bit serial version
module load apps/binapps/answers/monk/10b_ru0_mpi     # 64bit parallel MPI version
module load apps/binapps/answers/monk/10b_ru0         # 64bit serial version
module load apps/binapps/answers/monk/10a_ru0_64bit   # 64bit parallel MPI version
module load apps/binapps/answers/monk/10a_ru0         # 32bit serial version (not recommended but works)

# WIMS
module load apps/binapps/answers/wims/11c_dv3_mpi     # 64bit parallel MPI version (restricted to a specific research group)
module load apps/binapps/answers/wims/11b_dv14_mpi    # 64bit parallel MPI version
module load apps/binapps/answers/wims/11b_dv11_mpi    # 64bit parallel MPI version
module load apps/binapps/answers/wims/11b_dv11        # 64bit serial version
module load apps/binapps/answers/wims/11a_dv10_mpi    # 64bit parallel MPI version
module load apps/binapps/answers/wims/11a_dv10        # 64bit serial version
module load apps/binapps/answers/wims/10a_ru0         # 32bit serial version (not recommended but works)

# VisualWorkshop
# See below.

VisualWorkshop

This application should be run as an interactive job (see below for more details.) You should load the modulefile on the login node.

module load apps/binapps/answers/visualworkshop/5a
  #
  # You will also need to load the modulefile for the sim tool that you wish to run
  # from inside VisualWorkshop. For example, if you intend to run WIMS then please
  # load the required wims modulefile. See above.


# NO LONGER WORKS ON CSF3
module load apps/binapps/answers/visualworkshop/3b
module load apps/binapps/answers/visualworkshop/3a

Nuclear Data Libraries

Various nuclear data libraries are available in the directory given by the environment variable:

$ANSWERS_DATA

For example, to see what is available, run:

ls $ANSWERS_DATA

You can use the $ANSWERS_DATA in your jobscripts (see below for examples).

Manuals

After loading a modulefile you can access the software manuals in the installation area. Use the evince command to read PDF manuals on the CSF login node.

$ ls $ANSWERS_HOME/manuals
$ evince $ANSWERS_HOME/manuals/getting_started.pdf >/dev/null 2>&1&

Running the applications

Please do not run MONK or WIMS on the login node. Jobs should be submitted to the compute nodes via batch.

VisualWorkshop will only run if the srun interactive session can be scheduled by the system (i.e., if there is a free core available in the interactive area).

VisualWorkshop (GUI)

Load the appropriate modulefile (see above) then use srun to launch the VisualWorkshop GUI on a compute node. For example:

# On the login node
module load apps/binapps/answers/visualworkshop/5a

# Also load the the sim tool you wish to run from within VisualWorkshop. For example:
module load apps/binapps/answers/wims/.....

# Start an interactive session on a compute node with a number of cores for the sim tool
srun -p interactive -n 1 -c 4 -t 60 visualworkshop
                     ###  ###  ####
                      #    #     # Wallclock limit. 60 is 60 minutes. Max is 0-6 (0 days, 6 hours).
                      #    #
                      #    # Number of cores that the simulation tool (e.g., WIMS, MONK) will use.
                      #
                      # Must be 1. Using -n 1 ensures only one copy of the GUI starts!

If there are free cores on an interactive node on which to run the application the GUI will start. If all of the interactive resources are in use then you will not receive an allocation. Please try again later.

Note that in the VisualWorkshop GUI, you will need to increase the number of cores used by the simulation tool from 1 (the initial default) to the number you requested on the command-line with the -c flag (4 in the above example):
VisualWorkshop number of cores for a parallel simulation

MONK

Serial batch job submission

Make sure you have the required MONK modulefile loaded then create a batch submission script, for example:

#!/bin/bash --login
#SBATCH -p serial
#SBATCH -t 1-0    # Wallclock limit (days-hours). Required!
                  # Max permitted is 7 days (7-0).

module purge
# We recommend loading the modulefile in the jobscript (change to your required version)
module load apps/binapps/answers/monk/10b_ru0

monk10b.out datsets=datsets.lis

Submit the jobscript using:

sbatch scriptname

where scriptname is the name of your jobscript.

Parallel batch job submission

Make sure you have the required MONK modulefile loaded then create a batch submission script, for example:

#!/bin/bash --login
#SBATCH -p multicore  # Partition is required. Runs on an AMD Genoa hardware.
#SBATCH -n numcores   # (or --ntasks=) where numcores is between 2 and 168.
#SBATCH -t 4-0        # Wallclock limit (days-hours). Required!
                      # Max permitted is 7 days (7-0).

module purge
# We recommend loading the modulefile in the jobscript (change to your required version)
module load apps/binapps/answers/monk/10b_ru0_mpi

mpirun -n $SLURM_NPROCS monk10b_mpi.out datsets=datsets.lis

Submit the jobscript using:

sbatch scriptname

where scriptname is the name of your jobscript.

WIMS

Serial batch job submission

Create a batch submission script, for example:

#!/bin/bash --login
#SBATCH -p serial
#SBATCH -t 1-0    # Wallclock limit (days-hours). Required!
                  # Max permitted is 7 days (7-0).

module purge
### We recommend loading the modulefile in the jobscript (change to your required version)
module load apps/binapps/answers/wims/11a_dv10

### Change this to select your required nuclear library
export LIBRARY=$ANSWERS_DATA/w10j312v1.dat

wims11a_dv10_64.out library=$LIBRARY input=./my_sim.txt output=./my_sim.out space=8000000

Submit the jobscript using:

sbatch scriptname

where scriptname is the name of your jobscript.

Parallel batch job submission

Create a batch submission script, for example:

#!/bin/bash --login
#SBATCH -p multicore  # Partition is required. Runs on an AMD Genoa hardware.
#SBATCH -n numcores   # (or --ntasks=) where numcores is between 2 and 168.
#SBATCH -t 4-0        # Wallclock limit (days-hours). Required!
                      # Max permitted is 7 days (7-0).

module purge
### We recommend loading the modulefile in the jobscript (change to your required version)
module load apps/binapps/answers/wims/11a_dv10_mpi

### Change this to select your required nuclear library
export LIBRARY=$ANSWERS_DATA/w10j312v1.dat

### You must specify the full path to the wims executable using 
### $WIMS_HOME/wims11a_dv10_64.out otherwise your job will fail
### if it tries to run the wecco executable as part of the job.

mpirun -n $SLURM_NPROCS $WIMS_HOME/wims11a_dv10_64.out library=$LIBRARY \
          input=./my_sim.txt output=./my_sim.out space=8000000

Submit the jobscript using:

sbatch scriptname

where scriptname is the name of your jobscript.

Further info

Updates

None.

Last modified on July 20, 2026 at 5:53 pm by George Leaver