Core design improvement by optimizing the control and protection system elements distribution

This research presents a new method for improving the core design in a nuclear reactor by focusing on finding the best configuration of the CPS elements in the core that leads to increased safety margin. Finding the optimum solution requires a huge amount of calculations in classical methods. It has been shown that the application of continuous Hopfield neural network accompanied by simulated annealing method to this problem not only reduces the amount of calculations, but also guarantees finding the best solution. In this study maximizing the control protection system worth inside the sample research reactor core is considered as the objective function. The result is the optimum configuration, which is in agreement with the pattern proposed by the designer.