Patent ID: 7574337
Filing Date: 2009-08-11
Classification: G21C,G21D,Y02E

Abstract:
1. A method of determining a fresh fuel bundle design for a core of a nuclear reactor, comprising: defining a plurality of inputs including user-defined target conditions for evaluating fuel rod type configurations of one or more reference fresh fuel bundle designs for each of N bundle groups; generating a response surface based on making single fuel rod-type exchanges in each (i,j) rod location of each bundle of a given reference bundle design being evaluated for each of the N bundle groups, the response surface including a plurality of transfer functions; iterating a search algorithm to evaluate a given combination of multiple fuel rod type exchanges made simultaneously across each of the N bundle groups using the generated response surface to generate candidate fresh fuel bundle design solutions and determine an accepted fresh fuel bundle design for each of the N bundle groups that satisfies the user-defined target conditions; and outputting data related to the accepted fresh fuel bundle design that satisfies the user-defined target conditions for each of the N bundle groups for display to a user, wherein generating the response surface includes