OPTIMIZING NUCLEAR-POWER-PLANT REFUELING WITH MIXED-INTEGER PROGRAMMING

The problem addressed here is scheduling the shutdown for refueling an d maintenance of nuclear power plants. The models have up to four reac tors requiring of the order of five shutdowns each over a five-year ti me horizon. The resulting mixed-integer program is large and complex w ith interesting structure. We show good results using a mixed-integer optimizer taking advantage of a strong linear programming formulation. (C) 1997 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.