Patent ID: 7480599

Claim:
A method for generating fuel loading data for a core in a nuclear reactor, wherein the core includes an array of fuel locations, the method comprising: defining an even cycle fuel bundle shift map of fuel bundles to be shifted to another core location during an even fuel loading cycle; defining an odd cycle fuel bundle shift map of fuel bundles to be shifted to another core location during an odd loading cycle, wherein the odd fuel loading cycle and even fuel loading cycle are alternative core refueling cycles; defining a discharge map identifying the another locations to receive the bundles from the locations identified in the even and odd cycle fuel bundle shift maps, and generating shuffling instructions indicating which fuel bundles from a prior refueling cycle are to be shifted to one of the another locations of the core for a subsequent fuel cycle, wherein fuel bundles to be shifted during the even fuel loading cycle are selected from the fuel bundles identified to be shifted in the even cycle fuel bundle shift map and bundles to be shifted during the odd fuel bundle loading cycle are selected from the fuel bundles identified to be shifted in the odd cycle fuel bundle shift map.