Predicting BWR Criticality with Data-Driven Machine Learning Model
This addresses an economic optimization challenge for nuclear power plant operators, but appears incremental as it applies existing deep learning methods to a specific domain.
The paper tackles the problem of predicting excess criticality in boiling water reactors to optimize fuel usage and avoid economic losses, proposing a data-driven deep learning model for estimation.
One of the challenges in operating nuclear power plants is to decide the amount of fuel needed in a cycle. Large-scale nuclear power plants are designed to operate at base load, meaning that they are expected to always operate at full power. Economically, a nuclear power plant should burn enough fuel to maintain criticality until the end of a cycle (EOC). If the reactor goes subcritical before the end of a cycle, it may result in early coastdown as the fuel in the core is already depleted. On contrary, if the reactor still has significant excess reactivity by the end of a cycle, the remaining fuels will remain unused. In both cases, the plant may lose a significant amount of money. This work proposes an innovative method based on a data-driven deep learning model to estimate the excess criticality of a boiling water reactor.