Equilibrium cycle for the operation of a BWR reactor using heuristic techniques

The results obtained when designing a 24-month equilibrium cycle for the operation of a BWR reactor are presented. To obtain the mentioned cycle, two types of assembly were worked with the same gadolinia content, but different average enrichment of ²³⁵U. In the same way, different batch sizes were worked until a batch size proposal was reached, considering the value of the effective neutron multiplication factor, the thermal limits, the calculation of the cold shutdown margin and the discharge burning. For the design of the equilibrium cycle, the Haling principle was considered.The design of the cycle in question was obtained using two computer systems: Sentetl and Olotl, both created by the fuel management group of the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Nucleares (ININ) and which have different heuristic techniques implemented. The results obtained show that is possible to generate an equilibrium cycle of 24-months, starting from the assemblies used in a transition cycle of the reactor. (author)