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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Latest News
Joint NEA project performs high-burnup test
An article in the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency’s July news bulletin noted that a first test has been completed for the High Burnup Experiments in Reactivity Initiated Accident (HERA) project. The project aim is to understand the performance of light water reactor fuel at high burnup under reactivity-initiated accidents (RIA).
Cheng-Der Wang, Chaung Lin
Nuclear Technology | Volume 176 | Number 1 | October 2011 | Pages 72-82
Technical Paper | Second Seminar on Accelerated Testing of Materials in Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Waste Storage Systems / Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-A12543
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A method for the automatic design of a boiling water reactor (BWR) control rod (CR) pattern (CRP) was developed using the rank-based ant system, which is an effective optimization algorithm for a combinatorial optimization problem. The designed BWR CRP followed either the A2-B1-A1-B2 or the A1-B2-A2-B1 sequence in this study. After the CRP was determined, the SIMULATE-3 code was used to calculate the axial power distribution, the effective multiplication factor keff, the shutdown margin, and three thermal limits-which were then used to evaluate the CRP and update the pheromone concentration. The developed methodology was demonstrated using design CRPs for several fuel loading patterns, showing that the designed patterns can be obtained within a reasonable computation time and with an acceptable cycle length.