Patent ID: 7224761
Filing Date: 2007-05-29
Classification: G21C,Y02E

Abstract:
1. A method of establishing a nuclear reactor core loading pattern for loading fuel assemblies and burnable absorbers into a nuclear reactor in accordance with a set of predetermined engineering requirements, said method comprising the steps of: a. providing nuclear data representing fuel assemblies and burnable absorbers in a nuclear reactor core; b. depleting said nuclear data to form a reference core depletion; c. incorporating said nuclear data into a system of equations of a nuclear design quality neutron flux solution which include constraints representing the neutron physics of said nuclear reactor, including nonlinear effects of shuffling said fuel assemblies and of loading said burnable absorbers into said reactor; d. employing said system of equations as a constraint matrix for a solver and running said solver, without first requiring multiple reactor core simulations to be run to map a response domain; and e. repeating steps b through d, updating the constraints and including objective functions which can be represented as linear constraints within said constraint matrix, in order to satisfy said specified engineering requirements and establish a global, nonlinear optimum core loading pattern.