Managing Model Data Introduced Uncertainties in Simulator Predictions for Generation IV Systems via Optimum Experimental Design (2011)

An optimization technique has been developed to select optimized experimental design specifications to produce data specifically designed to be assimilated to optimize a given reactor concept. Data from the optimized experiment is assimilated to generate posteriori uncertainties on the reactor concept’s core attributes from which the design responses are computed. The reactor concept is then optimized with the new data to realize cost savings by reducing margin. The optimization problem iterates until an optimal experiment is found to maximize the savings. A new generation of innovative nuclear reactor designs, in particular fast neutron spectrum recycle reactors, are being considered for the application of closing the nuclear fuel cycle in the future. Safe and economical design of these reactors will require uncertainty reduction in basic nuclear data which are input to the reactor design. These data uncertainty propagate to design responses which in turn require the reactor designer to incorporate additional safety margin into the design, which often increases the cost of the reactor. Therefore basic nuclear data needs to be improved and this is accomplished through experimentation. Considering the high cost of nuclear experiments, it is desired to have an optimized experiment which will provide the data needed for uncertainty reduction such that a reactor design concept can meet its target accuracies or to allow savings to be realized by reducing the margin required due to uncertainty propagated from basic nuclear data. However, this optimization is coupled to the reactor design itself because with improved data the reactor concept can be re-optimized itself. It is thus desired to find the experiment that gives the best optimized reactor design. Methods are first established to model both the reactor concept and the experiment and to efficiently propagate the basic nuclear data uncertainty through these models to outputs. The representativity of the experiment to the design concept is quantitatively determined. A technique is then established to assimilate this data and produce posteriori uncertainties on key attributes and responses of the design concept. Several experiment perturbations based on engineering judgment are used to demonstrate these methods and also serve as an initial generation of the optimization problem. Finally, an optimization technique is developed which will simultaneously arrive at an optimized experiment to produce an optimized reactor design. Solution of this problem is made possible by the use of the simulated annealing algorithm for solution of optimization problems. The optimization examined in this work is based on maximizing the reactor cost savings associated with the modified design made possible by using the design margin gained through reduced basic nuclear data uncertainties. Cost values for experiment design specifications and reactor design specifications are established and used to compute a total savings by comparing the posteriori reactor cost to the a priori cost plus the cost of the experiment. The optimized solution arrives at a maximized cost savings.