Abstract
In a pressurized water reactor (PWR), the fuel assemblies must be reloaded after operating for a period of time. Usually, loading pattern (LP) was designed by experienced engineer and LP should satisfy the safety requirements. Recently, the computer capability is greatly improved and thus it is possible to design LP automatically by computer code. Our laboratory had applied the combination of ant colony algorithm and tabu search to design LP, however, the computing time is rather long. In this research, quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm (QEA) incorporated with tabu search were adopted to design LP and reduce computing time. The C language was used to develop the computer program and the core states was calculated by SIMULATE-3 under UNIX environment. In this research, we use three methods to search the LP. Firstly, QEA was used alone. Secondly, the combination of QEA and tabu search were adopted with 3D core status calculation. Lastly, the combination of QEA with 2D calculation to find the proper initial LP at the begin of cycle and then tabu search with 3D calculation to find the final LP. The LP of Maanshan nuclear power plant unit one cycle 19 was chosen as the design target, the satisfactory LP was found and also the computing time was reduced.