| Patent Number |
Title Of Patent |
Date Issued |
| 7577230 |
Fuel support and method for modifying coolant flow in a nuclear reactor |
August 18, 2009 |
| Fuel supports for a nuclear reactor and methods of modifying fluid flow in a reactor using a fuel support. The fuel supports include a plurality of lumens and a plurality of fuel support apertures with each fuel support aperture being dimensioned for receiving a lower tie plate of a fuel |
| 7555092 |
System and method for continuous optimization of control-variables during operation of a nuclear |
June 30, 2009 |
| A system and method is provided for a continual updating of the optimization of multiple operational control-variables during the operation of a nuclear reactor over a plurality of fuel cycles. A networked computer system includes one or more hosts programmed to execute an optimizati |
| 7526058 |
Rod assembly for nuclear reactors |
April 28, 2009 |
| A rod assembly for a fuel bundle of a nuclear reactor may include an upper end piece, lower end piece and a plurality of rod segments attached between the upper and lower end pieces and to each other so as to form an axial length of the rod assembly. The rod assembly may include an adapt |
| 7505547 |
Assembly and method for mounting a fuel assembly having a predefined orientation within a nuclea |
March 17, 2009 |
| Assemblies and methods for mounting a fuel assembly in a nuclear reactor include a fuel assembly includes fuel rods within the fuel assembly and a lower tie plate with a fuel assembly mating fixture. A fuel support includes a fuel support mating fixture that is constructed to selectively |
| 7487133 |
Method and apparatus for adaptively determining weight factors within the context of an objectiv |
February 3, 2009 |
| The method and apparatus adaptively determine weighting factors within the context of an objective function for handling optimality conditions and constraints within an optimization search. The objective function is defined as a sum of credit and penalty components. The credit components |
| 7480599 |
Single cycle and equilibrium fuel loading method and system to reduce cycle outage in a boiling |
January 20, 2009 |
| A method for generating fuel loading data for a core in a nuclear reactor, wherein the core includes an array of fuel locations in the core, the method includes: defining an even cycle bundle shift map of fuel bundles to be shifted to another core location during an even fuel loading cyc |
| 7472045 |
Method for perturbating a nuclear reactor core fuel bundle design to generate a group of designs |
December 30, 2008 |
| A method has been developed to select fuel rod enrichments for a fuel bundle of a nuclear reactor, the method including: creating an ordered list of fuel rod types in an initial fuel bundle design; perturbing at least a subset of the fuel rod types in the initial fuel bundle design to |
| 7366273 |
Method of determining margins to operating limits for nuclear reactor operation |
April 29, 2008 |
| In a method of determining an operating margin to a given operating limit in a nuclear reactor, operational plant data from an on-line nuclear reactor plant is accessed, and reactor operation is simulated off-line using the operational plant data to generate predicted dependent variable |
| 7337099 |
Method, arrangement and computer program for generating database of fuel bundle designs for nucl |
February 26, 2008 |
| A method, arrangement and computer program is described for generating a database of selectable fresh fuel bundle designs usable in one or more nuclear reactors. In an example, an initial population of candidate fresh fuel bundle designs may be generated and a set of rod-type changes to |
| 7280946 |
Method and arrangement for determining pin enrichments in fuel bundle of nuclear reactor |
October 9, 2007 |
| A method and arrangement of determining pin enrichments for a fuel bundle of a nuclear reactor, where a plurality of input parameters and target conditions may be input and enrichment changes, to be made across the fuel bundle, may be calculated using response matrix technology. Fuel |
| 7266481 |
Method, arrangement and computer program for determining standardized rod types for nuclear reac |
September 4, 2007 |
| A method, arrangement and computer program is described for determining a set of standardized rod types for use in a nuclear reactor core. The method may include defining a set of rod type-related limits, and determining, based on the limits, an initial population of rod types to be |
| 7231333 |
Method and arrangement for developing core loading patterns in nuclear reactors |
June 12, 2007 |
| In the method, a set of limits applicable to a core may be defined, and a test core loading pattern design, to be used for loading the core, may be determined based on the limits. Reactor operation on at least a subset of the core may be simulated to produce a plurality of simulated resu |
| 7222061 |
Method and arrangement for developing rod patterns in nuclear reactors |
May 22, 2007 |
| In the method, a set of limits applicable to a test rod pattern design are defined, and a sequence strategy for positioning one or more subsets of the test rod pattern design is established. Reactor operation on a subset of the test rod pattern design, which may be a subset of fuel bundl |
| 6862329 |
In-cycle shuffle |
March 1, 2005 |
| According to the method, a reactor core is shut down during the operation cycle. One or more fuel bundles of the reactor core are then moved to new positions within the reactor core to increase a total energy, output of the reactor core as compared to continuing operation of the reactor |
