Abstract Nowadays, license renewal of nuclear power plants is difficult due to the political, technical, and economical reasons, and the optimum end-cycle strategy has become an interesting and important research topic. In this paper, commercial cycle optimization strategies considering permanent shutdown have been studied for a Westinghouse Electric Company type PWR core. Both the conventional equilibrium reload cores and end-cycle cores for permanent shutdown are considered for comparison. Multi-cycle optimizations are mainly focused on the economics and neutronics analysis based on the commercial design criteria. In this work, all the neutronic designs and analyses are done with a licensed design code system. A new 18- and 24-month hybrid approach is also introduced to mitigate design challenges for equilibrium reload cores. For the end-cycle optimization, various representative operational scenarios and fuel management schemes have been devised and analyzed for multi-cycle optimizations. For each end-cycle operational scenario, detailed multi-cycle designs are performed and an annual total cost is evaluated to find the optimal one. In addition, a sensitivity study for the cost components are performed.

中文翻译：

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考虑压水堆末端循环优化的多循环物理和经济学评估

摘要 如今，核电厂由于政治、技术和经济等方面的原因，换证难度较大，而最优的末端循环策略已成为一个有趣且重要的研究课题。在本文中，针对西屋电气公司型压水堆堆芯，研究了考虑永久停堆的商业循环优化策略。传统的平衡重装堆芯和用于永久关闭的循环结束堆芯都被考虑用于比较。多周期优化主要侧重于基于商业设计标准的经济性和中子学分析。在这项工作中，所有的中子设计和分析都是使用许可的设计代码系统完成的。还引入了一种新的 18 个月和 24 个月混合方法，以减轻平衡重新加载内核的设计挑战。对于末端循环优化，针对多循环优化设计和分析了各种具有代表性的操作场景和燃料管理方案。对于每个结束周期操作场景，都会执行详细的多周期设计，并评估年度总成本以找到最佳方案。此外，还对成本构成进行了敏感性研究。