Patent ID: 7672815

Claim:
A method of evaluating a proposed solution to a nuclear reactor constraint problem, comprising: providing, by a computer system, an objective function definition generic to constraint problems, the generic objective function definition being a sum of a first number of credit terms plus a sum of a second number of penalty terms, at least one of the second number of penalty terms being based on control blade movement; configuring, by the computer system, the generic objective function into a nuclear reactor constraint problem objective function; receiving, by the computer system, a value of at least one variable in at least one credit term in the configured objective function, the credit term variable being related to the proposed solution; receiving, by the computer system, a value of at least one variable in at least one penalty term in the configured objective function, the penalty term variable being related to the proposed solution; and generating, by the computer system, a figure of merit for the proposed solution based on the credit term variable and the penalty term variable using the configured objective function, wherein the at least one of the second number of penalty terms is based on one of at least a number of multi-directional control blade movements where a crossing of blade tips occurs and a number of control blades with a notch rate exceeding a threshold notch rate.