Patent ID: 8041548

Claim:
A method of evaluating proposed solutions to a nuclear reactor constraint problem, comprising: providing an objective function definition generic to a constraint problem, configuring the generic objective function into a nuclear reactor constraint problem objective function having channel deformation of control blades as a constraint, the nuclear reactor constraint problem objective function being a sum of optimization parameters and constraint parameters, each optimization parameter including a multiple of a credit term and an associated credit weight, the credit term being a numerical value associated with the optimization parameter, the credit weight being a numerical value corresponding to a relative importance of the associated credit term, each constraint parameter including a multiple of a penalty term and an associated penalty weight, the penalty term being a numerical value associated with a violation of a constraint, at least one penalty term including a summation of a number of control blades affected by the channel deformation, the penalty weight being a numerical value corresponding to a relative importance of the associated penalty term, at least one penalty weight being a numerical value corresponding to a relative importance of the control blades affected by the channel deformation, the channel deformation being at least one of bowing, bulging and twisting of a channel, the channel having walls surrounding a fuel bundle; receiving, for each proposed solution to the nuclear reactor constraint problem, a value of at least one variable in at least one credit term in the configured objective function at the processor, the credit term variable being related to the proposed solution; receiving, for each proposed solution to the nuclear reactor constraint problem, a value of at least one variable in at least one penalty term in the configured objective function at the processor, the penalty term variable being related to the proposed solution; generating, using the processor, a figure of merit for each of the proposed solutions to the nuclear reactor constraint problem based on the credit term variable and the penalty term variable using the configured objective function; and determining a desired one of the proposed solutions to the nuclear reactor constraint problem based on the generated figures of merit.