Network reconfiguration in distribution systems is realized by changing the status of sectiona1izing switches, and is usually done for loss minimization or load balancing in the system This parer presents an approach for loss minization in distribution systems using reactive tabu search. Tabu search attempts to determine a better solution in the manner of a greatest-descent algorithm, but it can not give any guarantee for the convergence property. Reactive tabu search can give convergence property by using reaction and escape mechanism. Therefore, it can find global optimal solution regardless of initial system configuration. To demonstrate the validity of the proposed algorithm, numerical calculations are carried out the 32 bus system models.