Problems in nuclear engineering – such as reactor core design – involve a multitude of design variables including fuel or assembly configurations; all of which require careful consideration when constrained by a set of objectives such as fuel temperature or assembly power density. Reactor design is one facet of nuclear engineering, where many nuclear engineers often face large multi-objective problems to solve. These types of problems can be solved by relying upon experts to aid in reducing the design space required for multi-objective optimization, however, computational optimization algorithms have been used to generate optimal solutions with reproducibility and quantitative evidence for designs. We present a review of multi-objective optimization literature including an introduction to optimization theory, commonly used multi-objective optimization algorithms, and current applications in nuclear science and engineering. From this review, researchers will glean an understanding of multi-objective optimization algorithms that are currently available, and gain a fundamental understanding of how to apply these techniques to a wide variety of problems in the fields of nuclear science and engineering.

核工程中的问题——例如反应堆堆芯设计——涉及多种设计变量，包括燃料或组件配置；当受到一系列目标（例如燃料温度或组件功率密度）的限制时，所有这些都需要仔细考虑。反应堆设计是核工程的一个方面，许多核工程师经常面临需要解决的大型多目标问题。这些类型的问题可以通过依靠专家帮助减少多目标优化所需的设计空间来解决，但是，计算优化算法已被用于生成具有可重复性和定量证据的设计的最佳解决方案。我们回顾了多目标优化文献，包括对优化理论的介绍，常用的多目标优化算法，以及当前在核科学和工程中的应用。从这篇综述中，研究人员将了解目前可用的多目标优化算法，并对如何将这些技术应用于核科学和工程领域的各种问题有一个基本的了解。