Huitzoctli: A system to design Control Rod Pattern for BWR’s using a hybrid method

Huitzoctli system was developed to design Control Rod Patterns for Boiling Water Reactors (BWR). The main idea is to obtain a Control Rod Pattern under the following considerations: (a) the critical reactor core state is satisfied, (b) the axial power distribution must be adjusted to a target axial power distribution proposal, and (c) the maximum Fraction of Critical Power Ratio (MFLCPR), the maximum Fraction of Linear Power Density (FLPD) and the maximum Fraction of Average Planar Power Density (MPGR) must be fulfilled. Those parameters were obtained using the 3D CM-PRESTO code. In order to decrease the problem complexity, Control Cell Core load strategy was implemented; in the same way, intermediate axial positions and core eighth symmetry were took into account. In this work, the cycle length was divided in 12 burnup steps. The Fuel Loading Pattern is an input data and it remains without changes during the iterative process. The Huitzoctli system was developed to use the combinatorial heuristics techniques Scatter Search and Tabu Search. The first one was used as a global search method and the second one as a local search method. The Control Rod Patterns obtained with the Huitzoctli system were compared to other Control Rod Patterns designs obtained with other optimization techniques, under the same operating conditions. The results show a good performance of the system. In all cases the thermal limits were satisfied, and the axial power distribution was adjusted to the target axial power distribution almost completely. It is very important to point out that, even though the cycle length improvement was not the main idea of this work, the effective multiplication factor (keff) at the end of the cycle was improved in all cases tested. The Huitzoctli system was programmed using Fortran 77 language in an Alpha Workstation with UNIX operating system.

► The system was developed to design Control Rod Patterns for Boiling Water Reactors.
► The critical reactor core and the thermal limits were fulfilled in all tested cases.
► The Fuel Loading Pattern remains without changes during the iterative process.
► The system uses the heuristics techniques: Scatter Search and Tabu Search.
► The effective multiplication factor keff at the EOC was improved in all tested cases.