Commercial LWR core design tools continue to evolve due to demands for increased cycle performance even as operational experience has introduced new limiting design constraints related to:: fuel bowing; vessel fluence; PWR fuel steaming; or cross- quadrant shuffling requirements/restrictions to mitigate core tilts. A key ongoing concern is that improved single cycle designs should not adversely affect multi-cycle and equilibrium performance.
This paper briefly reviews the capabilities of the XIMAGE/SIMAN core design code, with emphasis on recent enhancements related to emerging design constraints. Automation of equilibrium cycle energy analysis is then discussed. Finally, examples of the equilibrium energy performance for cores at different levels of optimization are presented.
