Global Sensitivity Analysis of Nuclear District Heating Reactor Primary Heat Exchanger and Pressure Vessel Optimization

A large-scale engineering case study combining techno-economic optimization with global sensitivity analysis.

SimDec is applied to an optimization model to decompose how uncertain parameters, such as pressure vessel costs and thermohydraulic assumptions, influence both the levelized cost of heat and the optimized design itself.

The study shows that not only external uncertainties matter: the optimized decision variables (tube length, inlet temperature, shell diameter) systematically respond to cost structures and constraints. This makes visible how design adaptation under uncertainty actually happens inside the optimizer.