摘要 |
A pressurized water reactor (PWR) includes a pressure vessel containing a nuclear reactor core immersed in primary coolant water, control rod assemblies (CRA's), and control rod drive mechanisms (CRDM's) operating the CRA's. The reactor core has axially varying 235U enrichment and/or axially varying burnable poison concentration. A CRDM controller controls the CRA's over a burn-up cycle that does not include fuel assembly shuffling and is divided into a plurality of burn-up intervals. The CRDM controller is configured to, for each burn up interval: position the CRA's in accordance with a CRA pattern defining a set of fixed positions for the CRA's except for a sub-set of CRA's designated by the CRA pattern as floating CRA's, and control power level of the PWR by adjusting the floating CRA's without not adjusting the CRA's not designated as floating CRA's. The primary coolant water optionally does not contain soluble neutron poison. |