Abstract Fully ceramic microencapsulated (FCM) fuel is originally proposed for replacement in light water reactors (LWRs) to enhance thermal hydraulic performance and reactor safety features. However, reactor core cycle length might be degraded by the fuel replacement. In the present paper, SMART reactor core, which employs conventional UO2 fuel in its original scheme, is redesigned based on FCM fuel. Reactor core configuration is optimized for extending the reactor core cycle length. Optimization is performed using imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA) in two steps. In the first step, multi-zone core configurations are investigated with the purpose of increasing effective multiplication factor. In the second step, utilizing integral burnable absorber (IBA) rods are evaluated with the object of power peaking factor reduction and flattening reactor power distribution. Finally, the ultimate target of the present study is achieved and core configuration with four zones is proposed that has potential of increasing reactor cycle time for 46 days with appropriate safe margin of power peaking factor.

中文翻译：

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基于FCM燃料的SMART堆芯设计优化

摘要 全陶瓷微囊化 (FCM) 燃料最初被提议用于替代轻水反应堆 (LWR)，以提高热工水力性能和反应堆安全特性。然而，燃料更换可能会缩短反应堆堆芯循环的长度。在本文中，SMART 反应堆堆芯在其原始方案中采用常规 UO2 燃料，基于 FCM 燃料进行了重新设计。反应堆堆芯配置经过优化以延长反应堆堆芯周期长度。使用帝国主义竞争算法 (ICA) 分两步执行优化。第一步，研究多区核心配置，目的是增加有效倍增因子。第二步，使用整体可燃吸收器 (IBA) 棒进行评估，目的是降低功率峰值因数和使反应堆功率分布平坦。最后，实现了本研究的最终目标，并提出了具有四个区域的堆芯配置，具有增加反应堆循环时间 46 天的潜力，并具有适当的功率峰值因数安全裕度。