Abstract:
Nuclear core design involves selecting optimal operational parameters and fuel loading to maximise energy production while satisfying safety margins. High-quality reliable core design is crucial to make nuclear energy safe and cost competitive. Traditionally, this process relies on expert judgment and trial-and-error methods, leading to lengthy iterative processes and repeated expensive computations. In this talk, I will explain the processes of nuclear core design and fuel design from a mathematical perspective, framing them as a multi-objective constrained optimisation problem. I will discuss how modern algorithms, surrogate modelling, and other techniques could be employed to accelerate optimisation problems in the nuclear industry.
Laboratory for Simulation and Modeling