Factoring-based method for the design of a nuclear fuel

In this work a simple method for a fuel lattice design is presented. The method is focused on finding the radial distribution of the fuel rods having different fissile contents to obtain a prescribed neutron multiplication factor k∞ to a certain discharge burnup and to minimize the rod power peaking. This method is based on the factorization of the fissile content of each fuel bar and the performance of this novel method was demonstrated with a fuel design composed of enriched uranium for a typical boiling water reactor (BWR). The results show that the factoring-based method for the design of a nuclear fuel converges to a minimum rod power peaking and a prescribed k∞ in few iterations. A comparative analysis shows that the proposed method is more efficient than existing methods.