BWR fuel reloads design using a Tabu search technique

We have developed a system to design optimized boiling water reactor fuel reloads. This system is based on the Tabu Search technique along with the heuristic rules of Control Cell Core and Low Leakage. These heuristic rules are a common practice in fuel management to maximize fuel assembly utilization and minimize core vessel damage, respectively. The system uses the 3-D simulator code CM-PRESTO and it has as objective function to maximize the cycle length while satisfying the operational thermal limits and cold shutdown constraints. In the system tabu search ideas such as random dynamic tabu tenure, and frequency-based memory are used. To test this system an optimized boiling water reactor cycle was designed and compared against an actual operating cycle. Numerical experiments show an improved energy cycle compared with the loading patterns generated by engineer expertise and genetic algorithms.