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DOE OSTI · 1885360

Light Water Reactor LEU+ Lattice Optimization

Bae, Jin Whan·Mertyurek, Ugur·Asgari, Mehdi
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Abstract

Commercial light water reactor (LWR) operators and fuel vendors in the United States are exploring potential changes to nuclear fuel that include low-enriched uranium plus (LEU+) designs to further improve operational economics (e.g., extend cycle length). LEU+ fuel is fuel with a maximum enrichment between 5 wt% and 10 wt% 235 U; it allows for higher assembly burnup but likely requires additional reactivity control, e.g., increased burnable absorbers. This report examines possible LEU+ fuel lattice design changes using the lattice physics code, SCALE/Polaris. An optimization driver called the Metaheuristic Optimization Tool (MOT) is used to automate domain space exploration and optimization of LEU+ lattice designs. Heuristics from previous LWR lattice optimization studies were used to construct the objective function and define the domain space for optimization. This work successfully demonstrated that the optimization algorithms of MOT can generate feasible, nonproprietary LEU+ lattice designs (GE14 10 × 10 and Westinghouse 17 × 17) that meet the constraints of traditional LWR lattices while extending cycle length.

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BibTeXRIS

Bae, Jin Whan, Mertyurek, Ugur, Asgari, Mehdi. 2022-09-01. Light Water Reactor LEU+ Lattice Optimization. https://doi.org/10.2172/1885360

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