Modeling by artificial neural networks. Application to the management of fuel in a nuclear power plant

The determination of the family of optimum core loading patterns for Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs) involves the assessment of the core attributes, such as the power peaking factor for thousands of candidate loading patterns. Despite the rapid advances in computer architecture, the direct calculation of these attributes by a neutronic code needs a lot of of time and memory. With the goal of reducing the calculation time and optimizing the loading pattern, we propose in this thesis a method based on ideas of neural and statistical learning to provide a feed forward neural network capable of calculating the power peaking corresponding to an eighth core PWR. We use statistical methods to deduct judicious inputs (reduction of the input space dimension) and neural methods to train the model (learning capabilities). Indeed, on one hand, a principal component analysis allows us to characterize more efficiently the fuel assemblies (neural model inputs) and the other hand, the introduction of the a priori knowledge allows us to reducing the number of freedom parameters in the neural network. The model was built using a multi layered perceptron trained with the standard back propagation algorithm. We introduced our neural network in the automatic optimization code FORMOSA, and on EDF real problems we showed an important saving in time. Finally, we propose an hybrid method which combining the best characteristics of the linear local approximator GPT (Generalized Perturbation Theory) and the artificial neural network. (author)