Abstract
In a PWR core, approximately 1/3 of the burned fuels are replaced by fresh fuels after about a year's operation. Reload cores are designed so as to minimize the radial power peaking factor under design requirements and some administrative constraints. The conventional way of generating an appropriate fuel loading pattern is a method of trial and error, which is laborious and requires much computer time. A computer aided system has therefore been developed to speed up and make more efficient the determination of fuel shuffling configurations in reload cores. The system consists of a rule-base system employing artificial intelligence techniques, a pin-wise diffusion code and a feedback program based on fuel assembly power distributions. It was successfully applied to cores with only burnable poison rods, with gadolinium-dispersed fuels and also to cores employing low leakage fuel management strategy.
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