FQMH-Vol I Sampe Report

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010
Nuclear Fuel Quality Management Handbook Volume I: Fabrication, Operation, Disposal and Transport of Nuclear Fuel
Authors
Karl Baur
Stochastikon GmbH, Wrzburg, Germany
Elart von Collani

Stochastikon GmbH, Wrzburg, Germany
Technical Editor
Peter Rudling
ANT International, Skultuna, Sweden
c March 2010 Advanced Nuclear Technology International Krongjutarvgen 2C, SE-730 50 Skultuna Sweden info@antinternational.com www.antinternational.com
Disclaimer
The information presented in this report has been compiled and analysed by Advanced c and its subcontractors. Nuclear Technology International Europe AB ANT International ANT International has exercised due diligence in this work, but does not warrant the accuracy or completeness of the information. ANT International does not assume any responsibility for any consequences as a result of the use of the information for any party, except a warranty for reasonable technical skill, which is limited to the amount paid for this assignment by each FQMH customer.
c Advanced Nuclear Technology International Europe AB, ANT International, 2010 Copyright II
Contents
Preface Acknowledgements XI XV
I
1
A Birds-Eye View on Nuclear Technology

The Dawn of Nuclear Energy 1.1 From Nuclear Threat to Nuclear Opportunity 1.2 Quality Management of Nuclear Installations 1.3 The Nuclear Fuel Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3.1 Mining and Milling . . . . . . . . . . 1.3.2 Conversion and Enrichment . . . . . 1.3.3 Producing Electric Energy . . . . . . 1.3.4 Fuel Fabrication . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3.5 Waste Management . . . . . . . . . . Energy Source 2.1 The Signicance of Fuel . . . . . . 2.2 Generations of Nuclear Reactors . . 2.2.1 First Generation Reactors . 2.2.2 Second Generation Reactors 2.2.3 Third Generation Reactors . 2.2.4 Fourth Generation Reactors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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International Networking 3.1 The Role of International Organizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Comprehensive Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.1 State Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.2 Industrial Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.3 Public Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.4 Scientic Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.5 Individual Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Selected Organisations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.1 The International Atomic Energy Association . . . . . . . 3.3.2 EURATOM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.3 The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.4 The International Commission on Radiological Protection 3.3.5 The Nuclear Energy Institute (USA) . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.6 The Electric Power Research Institute (USA) . . . . . . . 3.3.7 The Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (USA) . . . . .
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II
4
Technical and Physical Fundamentals

Materials 4.1 Introduction to Material Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1.1 The International Systems of Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
c Advanced Nuclear Technology International Europe AB, ANT International, 2010. Copyright III
33
35 35 36
4.2
4.3
4.4
4.5
4.6
4.7
4.8 4.9
4.1.2 Measurement Uncertainty . . . . . 4.1.3 Key Values in Material Science . . Properties of Solid Bodies . . . . . . . . . 4.2.1 Crystallographic Structure . . . . . 4.2.2 Ceramic Crystallographic Structures 4.2.3 Microstructure . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.4 Crystallographic Defects . . . . . . 4.2.5 Alloying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.6 Elasticity, Plasticity and Fracture . . 4.2.7 Phase Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.8 Corrosion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fissile Materials as Energy Source . . . . . 4.3.1 Uranium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.2 Plutonium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Materials for Nuclear Fuel Assemblies . . . 4.4.1 Zirconium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.2 Zirconium Alloys . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.3 Iron and Steel . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.4 Superalloys . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.5 Crystal Structures of Superalloys . . Nuclear Fuel Materials . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5.1 Material Requirements . . . . . . . 4.5.2 Uranium Dioxide UO2 . . . . . . . 4.5.3 Plutonium Dioxide PuO2 . . . . . . 4.5.4 Other Types of Nuclear Fuel . . . . Coolants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6.1 Water as Coolant . . . . . . . . . . 4.6.2 Gas as Coolant . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6.3 Sodium as Coolant . . . . . . . . . Materials for Neutron Absorber . . . . . . . 4.7.1 Gadolinum Gd . . . . . . . . . . . 4.7.2 Erbium Er . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.7.3 Boron B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.7.4 Zirconium Diboride ZrB2 . . . . . Materials for Neutron Moderation . . . . . Auxiliary Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.9.1 Lubricants . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.9.2 Grinding Material . . . . . . . . . . 4.9.3 Detergents . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.9.4 Brazing Agents . . . . . . . . . . . 4.9.5 Pore Formers and Other Additives .
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38 40 40 40 44 45 45 46 47 53 56 61 62 67 68 68 72 76 79 81 83 83 83 86 88 88 89 89 90 90 90 91 91 91 91 93 93 93 93 93 93 95 95 96 96 100 101 101 102 103 103 103 104 105 106 107 108
Manufacturing Techniques and Processes 5.1 Introduction to Manufacturing . . . . . . . 5.2 Heat Treatment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.1 Introduction to Heat Treatment . . . 5.2.2 Sintering Technique . . . . . . . . 5.3 Metal Casting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.1 Introduction to Metal Casting . . . 5.3.2 Investment Casting . . . . . . . . . 5.3.3 Rapid Prototyping (RP) . . . . . . 5.4 Forming Treatments . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4.1 Introduction to Forming Treatments 5.4.2 Cold-Pilger Technique . . . . . . . 5.4.3 Cold-Drawing . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4.4 Cold-Pressing . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4.5 Roll-Straightening Technique . . . 5.4.6 Spring Coil Machining . . . . . . .
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5.5
5.6
5.7
Cutting Treatments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5.1 Introduction to Cutting Treatments . . . 5.5.2 Electrochemical Machining (ECM) . . 5.5.3 Electrical Discharge Machining (EDM) 5.5.4 Stamping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5.5 Drilling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5.6 Milling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5.7 Grinding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Assembling Treatments . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6.1 Introduction to Assembling Treatments 5.6.2 Welding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6.3 Soldering and Brazing . . . . . . . . . Coating Treatments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.7.1 Surface Coating . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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109 109 109 110 111 112 113 113 114 114 115 118 118 119 121 121 122 123 126 127 130 130 131 132 133 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 140 143 143 143 144 144 145 146 147 148 150 152 156
Measurements and Inspections 6.1 Measurements as a Management Tool . . . . . . 6.1.1 Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.2 Specication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.3 Tolerances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.4 Measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Visual Inspection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.1 Visual Inspection by Man . . . . . . . . 6.2.2 Automatic Visual Control . . . . . . . . 6.3 Dye Penetrant Inspection . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 Measurement of Length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4.1 Coordinate Measuring Machine . . . . . 6.4.2 Laser Scan Micrometer Test . . . . . . . 6.4.3 Distance Measurement . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 Gamma-Scanner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5.1 Active Gamma Scanner . . . . . . . . . 6.5.2 Passive Gamma Scanner . . . . . . . . . 6.6 Helium Leak Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.7 Radiography and X -Ray Microscopy . . . . . . . 6.8 Eddy Current Inspection . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.9 Ultrasonic Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.9.1 Through-Transmission Ultrasonic Method 6.9.2 Pulse-Echo Ultrasonic Method . . . . . . 6.10 Measurement of Stress and Strain . . . . . . . . 6.10.1 Piezo-Electric Force Sensors . . . . . . . 6.10.2 Strain Gauge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.11 Metallography and Ceramography . . . . . . . . 6.11.1 Replica Technique . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.11.2 Scanning Technique . . . . . . . . . . . 6.11.3 Mass Analyzing Techniques . . . . . . . 6.11.4 Testing Mechanical Properties . . . . . . 6.12 Measurement by Sampling . . . . . . . . . . . .
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III
7
Manufacturing of Nuclear Fuel

Nuclear Fuel Pellets 7.1 Nuclear Fuel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Extraction of Triuranium Octaoxide U3 O8 . . . . . . 7.3 Conversion to Uranium Hexauoride . . . . . . . . . 7.4 Enrichment of Uranium Hexauoride . . . . . . . . 7.4.1 Uranium Enrichment and its Signicance . . 7.4.2 Present State of World Uranium Enrichment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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7.5
7.6
7.7
7.8 8
7.4.3 World Uranium Enrichment Capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4.4 Enrichment Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4.5 Management of the Uranium Enrichment Process . . . . . . . . Conversion to Uranium Dioxide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.5.1 The ADU-Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.5.2 The AUC-Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.5.3 The Dry Bed Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.5.4 The GECO Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.5.5 The Integrated Dry Route Process (IDR) and the AREVA-Dry Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Uranium Pellet Fabrication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.6.1 Pellet Manufacturers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.6.2 Additives Used in the Pellet Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.6.3 Manufacturing of Green Compacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.6.4 Manufacturing of Fuel Pellets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MOX Pellet Fabrication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.7.1 The OCOM Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.7.2 The AUPuC-Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.7.3 The MIMAS-Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.7.4 The COCA-Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.7.5 The SBR-Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Uranium-Gadolinium Pellet Fabrication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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168 169 173 174 175 176 177 177 177 179 179 179 180 182 184 185 185 185 185 186 186 189 189 189 191 194 196 198 201 201 202 203 203 208 209 210 212 212 213 213 215 215 215 217 218 219 219 220 220 222 223 223 223 227
Production of Zircaloy Components 8.1 Preliminary Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2 Conversion of Zircon Sand to Zirconium Sponge . 8.3 Manufacturing of Zirconium Ingots . . . . . . . . 8.4 Manufacturing of Hollow Tubes by Extrusion . . . 8.5 Manufacturing of Cladding Tubes . . . . . . . . . 8.6 Fabrication of the Spacer Strips and Fuel Channels
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The Fuel Assembly 9.1 Introduction to Fuel Assemblies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1.1 PWR Fuel Assemblies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1.2 BWR Fuel Assemblies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1.3 Components of Fuel Assemblies . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2 Fuel Cladding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2.1 Incentives for the Development of Cladding Material 9.2.2 Development of Cladding Materials . . . . . . . . . 9.3 Top and Bottom End Plug . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.4 Top and Bottom Nozzles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.5 Springs and Spacers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.5.1 Spacers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.5.2 Compression and Leaf Springs . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.6 Manufacturing of Fuel Assemblies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.6.1 Overview of Fuel Manufacturing . . . . . . . . . . . 9.6.2 Manufacturing of Fuel Rods . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.6.3 Manufacturing the Skeleton . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.6.4 Manufacturing the Fuel Assemblies . . . . . . . . . 9.6.5 Final Inspection and Shipping . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.7 Associated Core Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.7.1 PWR Control Assembly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.7.2 BWR Control Rod . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.7.3 PWR Flow Restrictor Assembly . . . . . . . . . . . 9.7.4 Neutron Source Assembly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.7.5 Instrumentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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10 Front End Inspections

c Advanced Nuclear Technology International Europe AB, ANT International, 2010 Copyright VI
10.1 Manufacturing and Examination Sequence Plan . . . . 10.2 Documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3 Inspection of Material and Parts . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3.1 Fuel Rod . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3.2 Zircaloy Cladding Tubes . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3.3 Fuel Pellet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3.4 End Plug . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3.5 Plenum Spring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3.6 Skeleton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3.7 Top and Bottom End Fittings . . . . . . . . . . 10.3.8 Hold Down Spring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3.9 Guide Tube (PWR) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3.10 Spacer/Grids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3.11 Instrumentation Tube . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3.12 Evaluation and Reporting of Inspection Results
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IV
The Reactor
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241 241 241 243 244 244 246 249 251 256 257 259 260 260 262 264 265 272 273 274 277 279 280 281 283 286 286 288 288 291 291 293 294 295 299 300 300 301
11 Fuel and Core Design Criteria 11.1 The Design Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1.1 Design Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1.2 Failure Mechanisms of Fuel Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1.3 The Deterministic Safety Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1.4 The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale . . . . . . . . . . 11.1.5 The Safety Margin Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1.6 An Alternative Safety Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1.7 Loss of Coolant Accident (LOCA) and Reactivity Initiated Accident (RIA) 11.1.8 Anticipated Transients Without Scram (ATWS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1.9 Design Requirements Due to External Safety Hazards . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1.10 Risk Assessment Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2 Neutron Physics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2.1 Nuclear Fission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2.2 Neutron Cross Section . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2.3 Neutron Moderation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2.4 Neutron Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2.5 Reactivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.3 Thermohydraulics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.3.1 Heat Transfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.3.2 Peaking and Hot Channel Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.3.3 Temperature Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.3.4 Pressure Drop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.3.5 Core Instability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.4 Mechanical, Thermohydraulic and Nuclear Design Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.5 Water Chemistry Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.5.1 Water Chemistry of PWRs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.5.2 Water Chemistry of VVERs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.5.3 Water Chemistry of BWRs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Design Verication 12.1 Design Tools and Simulation . . . . . . . . . . 12.2 Code Verication and Validation . . . . . . . . 12.3 Deterministic Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.3.1 Treatment of Uncertainty . . . . . . . . 12.3.2 Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) . 12.3.3 Finite Element Method (FEM) . . . . . 12.3.4 Nodal Method (NM) . . . . . . . . . . 12.4 Stochastic Modelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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c Advanced Nuclear Technology International Europe AB, ANT International, 2010 Copyright VII
12.4.1 Quantication of Randomness . . . . . . . . . 12.4.2 Probability Distribution of a Random Variable 12.4.3 Monte Carlo Simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.4.4 The MCNP-Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.5 Design Calculation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.5.1 Integrity of Reactor Internal Components . . . 12.5.2 Computer Codes for Reactor Physics . . . . . 12.5.3 Fuel Assemblies and Fuel Rods . . . . . . . . 12.5.4 Computer Codes for the Cooling Circuit . . . . 12.5.5 Computer Codes for the Containment . . . . . 12.6 Validation of Computer Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.6.1 Historical Research Reactors . . . . . . . . . . 12.6.2 Nuclear Test Facilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.6.3 International Nuclear Projects . . . . . . . . . 13 In-Core Fuel Management 13.1 The Tasks of In-Core Fuel Management 13.2 Economic Considerations . . . . . . . . 13.3 Incore Fuel Management Map . . . . . 13.4 Core Loading Strategies . . . . . . . . 13.4.1 Out-In Core Loading . . . . . . 13.4.2 In-Out Core Loading . . . . . . 13.5 Refuelling Step Sequence Plan . . . . . 13.5.1 Step Sequence Plan for a PWR . 13.5.2 Step Sequence Plan for a BWR 13.6 Maintenance During Refuelling . . . . 13.7 Restart of the Reactor After Refuelling . 13.7.1 The Restart of a PWR . . . . . 13.7.2 The Restart of a BWR . . . . . 13.8 Reactor Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.8.1 Operation Modes for PWR . . . 13.8.2 Operation Modes for BWR . . .
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301 302 303 305 307 307 308 309 311 311 312 312 313 313 315 315 316 318 320 320 320 321 321 324 325 325 325 326 327 327 328
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Nuclear Waste and Storage

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331 331 332 333 334 334 334 335 340 342 344 345 346 348 348 348 349 349 350 351 351 351
14 Fuel Storage at the Reactor 14.1 On-site Wet and Dry Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.2 Wet Storage of Fuel Assemblies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.2.1 Risks Involved with Wet Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.3 Dry Storage of Fuel Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.3.1 Dry Storage of Fresh Fuel Assemblies . . . . . . . . . 14.3.2 Dry Storage of Irradiated Fuel Assemblies . . . . . . . 14.4 Poolside Inspections of Spent Fuel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.4.1 Visual Inspection of Fuel Assemblies . . . . . . . . . 14.4.2 Identication of Defective Fuel Assemblies and Rods . 14.4.3 Measurement of the Oxide Layer Thickness . . . . . . 14.4.4 Analysis of the Fission Gas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.4.5 Measurement of Deformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.4.6 Relaxation of Spring Force . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.4.7 Drop Time of Control Rods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.5 Repair of a Fuel Assembly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.5.1 Exchange of a Defective Fuel Rod . . . . . . . . . . . 14.5.2 Exchange of a Defective Skeleton in PWRs and BWRs 14.5.3 Other Repair Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.6 Hot Cell Inspection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.6.1 Nondestructive Hot Cell Examinations . . . . . . . . . 14.6.2 Destructive Hot Cell Examinations . . . . . . . . . . .
c Advanced Nuclear Technology International Europe AB, ANT International, 2010 Copyright VIII
15 Reprocessing of Spent Fuel 15.1 Signicance of Reprocessing . . . . . . . . 15.2 Current State of Reprocessing . . . . . . . 15.3 The PUREX Process . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.4 The Electrorening Reprocessing Technique 15.5 The Decontamination Factor . . . . . . . . 16 Interim and Final Disposal 16.1 The Nuclear Waste Issue . . . . . . 16.2 Implications of Nuclear Waste . . . 16.3 Classication of Radioactive Waste . 16.4 Composition of Nuclear Waste . . . 16.5 Disposal Alternatives . . . . . . . . 16.6 Signicance of Interim Disposal . . 16.7 Wet Disposal . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.8 Dry Disposal . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.9 Disposal of Low-Level Waste . . . .
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VI
Nuclear Transports
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375 375 375 376 377 377 381 381 381 383 383 384 385 387 388 389 389 390 391
17 Transport Requirements 17.1 Global Aspects . . . . . . . . . . . 17.2 Signicance of Nuclear Transports . 17.3 Front End and Back End . . . . . . 17.4 Safety and Security . . . . . . . . . 17.5 The IAEA Safety Standards TS-R-1
18 Transports Within the Fuel Cycle 18.1 Transport of Uranium Ore Concentrate . . 18.2 Transport of UF6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.3 Transport of UO2 -Powder or UO2 -Pellets 18.4 Transport of PuO2 -Powder . . . . . . . . 18.5 Transport of Uranium-Assemblies . . . . 18.6 Transport of MOX-Fuel Assemblies . . . 18.7 Transport of Irradiated Fuel Assemblies . 18.8 Transport of Other Irradiated Material . .
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19 Quality Management 19.1 Science of Quality Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.2 Nuclear Fuel Management Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.3 A Short Note on Quantication of Uncertainty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
VII
Appendix
395
397 441 449 461
A Concepts and Denitions B Acronyms and Abbreviations
Bibliography Index
c Advanced Nuclear Technology International Europe AB, ANT International, 2010 Copyright IX
c Advanced Nuclear Technology International Europe AB, ANT International, 2010 Copyright X
Preface
The Fuel Quality Management Handbook (FQMH), which is presented here in four volumes, is aimed at all those involved with nuclear energy. Here, the word fuel refers to nuclear fuel and the handbook covers the entire nuclear fuel cycle, from mining of ore to disposal of spent fuel. Today, quality is more important than ever and especially so in the nuclear industry, where it is a synonym for safety and efciency in all the phases of the fuel cycle. The focus of the FQMH is therefore quality, and the management of quality. Quality management is closely related to the uncertainty about the future developments. Hence, dening, modelling and handling of uncertainty is one of the central topics of the FQMH. The term management, as used in the FQMH, must be understood to encompass all such individuals, ofces and bodies, as: engineers developing and improving the design of nuclear fuel and nuclear reactors; suppliers of nuclear fuels and nuclear reactors; the operators of nuclear power plants; international and national organizations involved in nuclear energy; the authorities responsible for regulating and supervising nuclear power plants; the ofces, or agencies responsible for the granting, extension or withdrawal of operator licenses and shutdown of installations.
The FQMH provides a comprehensive and integrated treatment of all areas related to the generation of energy by means of nuclear ssion. In particular, of all those issues and their inter-relationships are dealt with that have to be considered in order to assure a successful and sustainable management. The overall contents of the FQMH are arranged as follows: Volume I: The FQMH-I commences with a brief history of the nuclear industry. This is followed by expositions on the mining of uranium ore, the manufacture of nuclear fuels and of nuclear reactors, power-plant operations, the various inspections that are carried out, and the transport and reprocessing or disposal of spent fuel. A special feature of FQMH-I is that it introduces, in self-contained chapters, the various materials used in the nuclear fuel cycle and the technology and methodology used in manufacturing, controlling and analyzing the fuel. Volume II: FQMH-II examines licensing processes and legal and regulatory frameworks in countries with nuclear installations. It also compares and analyzes the various procurement processes that exist throughout the nuclear industry. Volume III: FQMH-III is devoted to the concept of quality and to the latest scientic developments in this important area. Furthermore, the closely related science of quality management is introduced and explained and, nally, the numerous relevant international standards that must be considered are introduced and examined. Volume IV: FQMH-IV, nally, is devoted to the most important challenge facing those charged with the task of managing quality, namely how to handle uncertainty. Uncertainty, brought about by variability in human performance, in materials, in processes, etc., plays a crucial role in almost all stages of the nuclear cycle. Any improvement in the handling of uncertainty may have an immediate positive effect on the efciency of decisions that must be made throughout this cycle. FQMH-4, therefore, contains the latest scientic results concerning the issue uncertainty and demonstrates how these ndings may be benecially applied in the nuclear fuel cycle. Appendix: One feature of nuclear technology is the abundant use of acronyms and abbreviations which make reading and understanding of materials a difcult task. The text of the FQMH is written using only very little abbreviations. However, a comprehensive list of commonly employed acronyms and abbreviations is supplied in an appendix, which also contains an encyclopedic list of concepts and denitions associated with the nuclear industry. This is particularly important, as there are a number of areas of possible ambiguity.
The FQMH is designed to be comprehensive in the sense that the text together with the cited references provides the necessary working knowledge for successful quality management across the nuclear fuel cycle. Successful management leads not just to sustainable efciency and protability of nuclear power plants, but also to the acceptance of nuclear energy by the wider public. Public acceptability is closely linked to the
c Advanced Nuclear Technology International Europe AB, ANT International, 2010 Copyright XI
manner in which uncertainty in nuclear energy supply, and in nuclear facility operations in particular, is addressed and represented. This is a further reason for the focus on uncertainty in the FQMH. The FQMH does not set out to describe or impart new technology or scientic advances for the nuclear sector. It does, however, set out to provide new insights and to encourage an approach that can aid decisionmaking in the sector. It is written in an easy-to-understand style which does not assume prior specialized knowledge. Moreover, it uses a unied terminology that could be adapted, particularly by international organizations in order to avoid the misunderstandings that can currently arise due to ambiguities in existing terminology, denitions, etc. The FQMH can therefore be used as follows: as material for self-study by all persons involved in the nuclear fuel cycle who wish to acquire a better overall understanding of their assigned tasks and responsibilities; as instructional material for training courses in any area of the nuclear fuel cycle, including the supply, manufacture and control of nuclear fuels, licensing and procurement; as a guide to the identication of weaknesses in management and decision-making in the nuclear fuel cycle, and the identication of possible corrective measures.
Reader of the FQMH-I that are interested in getting additional expert information are referred to a number of different reports published by ANT International. Samples of the reports can be downloaded at the web-site: http://www.antinternational.com. More specically the following Reports/Handbooks give more detailed information related to several topics covered in the FQMH-I: Fuel Fabrication Process Handbook, FFPH, Alfred Strasser and Peter Rudling, ANT International, Skultuna, Sweden,2005. Fuel Material Technology Report, FMTR Vol. I by Brian Cox, Friedrich Garzarolli, Ron Adamson, Peter Rudling, Alfred Strasser. Fuel Material Technology Report, FMTR Vol.II by Peter Rudling, Ron Adamson, Hubert Bairiot, Brian Cox, Peter Ford, Friedrich Garzarolli, Rolf Riess, Alfred Strasser. Fuel Material Technology Report, FMTR Vol. IV by Peter Rudling and Charles Patterson. Environmentally-Assisted Degradation of Structural Materials in Water Cooled Nuclear Reactors, SMDR, Peter Ford.
More information can also be obtained from the following ZIRconium Alloy Technology, ZIRAT/Information on ZircoNium Alloys, IZNA reports: ZIRAT14/IZNA9 STR on Impact of manufacturing changes on Zr alloy in-pile performance by Peter Rudling, Ron Adamson, Brian Cox, Friedrich Garzarolli, Alfred Strasser, Antonina Nikulina, Slava Shishov. ZIRAT14/IZNA9 STR on In-Reactor Creep of Zirconium Alloys by Ron Adamson, Friedrich Garzarolli and Charles Patterson. ZIRAT13/IZNA8 STR on Effect Of Hydrogen on Zirconium Alloy Properties by Alfred Strasser, Ron Adamson and Friedrich Garzarolli. ZIRAT13/IZNA8 STR on Effect Of Hydrogen on Zirconium Alloy Performance by Alfred Strasser, Peter Rudling, Brian Cox and Friedrich Garzarolli. ZIRAT12/IZNA7 STR on Welding of Zr Alloys by Peter Rudling, Alfred Strasser,Friedrich Garzarolli. ZIRAT12/IZNA7 STR on Corrosion Mechanisms in Zirconium Alloys by Ron Adamson, Friedrich Garzarolli, Brian Cox, Alfred Strasser, Peter Rudling. ZIRAT11/IZNA6 Special Topic Report (STR) on PCI and PCMI by Ron Adamson, Brian Cox, John Davies, Friedrich Garzarolli, Peter Rudling and Sam Vaidyanathan. ZIRAT11/IZNA6 STR on Manufacturing of Zr-Nb Alloys by Antonina Nikulina, Slava Shishov, Brian Cox, Friedrich Garzarolli and Peter Rudling. ZIRAT10/IZNA5 STR on Impact of Irradiation on Material Performance by Ron Adamson and Brian Cox. ZIRAT10/IZNA5 STR on Structural Behaviour of Fuel and Fuel Channel Components by Friedrich Garzarolli, Brian Cox, Alfred Strasser and Peter Rudling. ZIRAT9/IZNA4 STR on Corrosion of Zr-Nb Alloys by Brian Cox, Friedrich Garzarolli and Peter Rudling.
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ZIRAT9/IZNA4 STR on Loss of Coolant Accidents, LOCA, and Reactivity Initiated Accidents, RIA, in BWRs and PWRs by Peter Rudling, Friedrich Garzarolli and Ron Adamson. ZIRAT8/IZNA3 STR on High Burnup Fuel Issues by Ron Adamson, Friedrich Garzarolli, Peter Rudling, Gunnar Wikmark and Alfred Strasser. ZIRAT8/IZNA3 STR on The Effects of Zn Injection (PWRs and BWRs) and Noble Metal Chemistry (BWRs) on Fuel Performance - An Update by Brian Cox, Friedrich Garzarolli, Peter Rudling and Alfred Strasser. ZIRAT7/IZNA2 STR on Corrosion of Zirconium Alloys by Ron Adamson, Brian Cox, Friedrich Garzarolli, Peter Rudling, Alfred Strasser and Gunnar Wikmark. ZIRAT7/IZNA2 STR on Dimensional Stability of Zirconium Alloys, by Ron Adamson and Peter Rudling. ZIRAT6/IZNA1 STR on Water Chemistry and CRUD Inuence on Cladding Corrosion, by Gunnar Wikmark and Brian Cox. ZIRAT6/IZNA1 STR on Mechanical Properties of Zirconium Alloys, by Ron Adamson and Peter Rudling. ZIRAT5/IZNA1 STR on Manufacturing of Zirconium Alloy Materials, by Peter Rudling and Ron Adamson. ZIRAT5/IZNA1 STR on Hydriding Mechanisms and Impact on Fuel Performance, by Peter Rudling and Brian Cox.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the support of many persons and organizations. We are especially indebted to the two reviewers of this handbook, who made numerous valuable suggestions that considerably improved the contents. Many further organizations supplied us with relevant photos, gures and advice, which made the manuscript more lively and illustrative. Reviewer: Dr. Charles Patterson retired from Global Nuclear Fuel in 2008 as a Consulting Engineer for Fuel Engineering. During 44 years with GE Nuclear Energy/GNF, he was actively engaged in the development of fuel manufacturing processes, fuel materials, thermal-mechanical and fuel performance models and in the improvement of fuel reliability. Dr. Ted Darby is a Specialist in Nuclear Materials and Engineering Fellow at Rolls-Royce plc.
Fuel Vendors: AREVA NP GmbH, Paul-Gossen-Str. 100, 91001 Erlangen, Germany Global Nuclear Fuel, 3901 Castle Hayne Rd., P.O. Box 780, M/C H25, Wilmington, NC 28402, USA Westinghouse Electric Sweden AB, 721 63 Vsteras, Sweden
Nuclear Power Stations: Kernkraftwerk Biblis, RWE Power Aktiengesellschaft, Postfach 11 40, 68643 Biblis, Germany Kernkraftwerk Gundremmingen GmbH, Dr.-August-Weckesser-Str. 1, 89355 Gundremmingen, Germany Kernkraftwerk Gsgen-Dniken AG, 4648 Dniken, Switzerland Kernkraftwerk Philippsburg, EnBW Kernkraft GmbH, Rheinschanzinsel, 76661 Philippsburg, Germany
Other Companies: DME Nanotechnologie GmbH, Am Listholze 82, Hannover, Germany Helling GmbH, Spoekerdamm 2, 25436 Heidgraben, Germany Hottinger Baldwin Messtechnik GmbH, Im Tiefen See 45, 64293 Darmstadt, Germany INGNIEURBRO ODENTHAL GbR, Zum Alten Wasserwerk 6, 51491 Overath - Immekeppel, Germany GNS Gesellschaft fr Nuklear-Service mbH, Hollestrae 7A, 45127 Essen, Germany Mahr GmbH, Advertising & Technical Documentation, Reutlingerstr. 48, 73728 Esslingen, Germany NOVUS GmbH & Co. KG, Hessenweg 53, 49803 Lingen, Germany Olympus Deutschland GmbH, Wendenstrae 14-18, 20097 Hamburg, Germany Dr. Heinrich Schneider, Messtechnik GmbH, Rotlay-Muehle, 55545 Bad Kreuznach, Germany Keyence Deutschland GmbH, Siemensstr.1, 63263 Neu-Isenburg, Germany Salzgitter Mannesmann Stainless Tubes GmbH, Wiesenstrae 36, 45473 Mlheim an der Ruhr, Germany RWE Power Aktiengesellschaft, Huyssenallee 2, 45128 Essen, Germany Technische Universitt Berlin, Institut fr Werkzeugmaschinen und Fabrikbetrieb, Pascalstrae 8 - 9, 10587 Berlin, Germany University of Graz, Institute of Earth Sciences (Geology and Palaeontology), Heinrichstrasse 26, A-8010 Graz, Austria URENCO Deutschland GmbH, Rntgenstr. 4, 48599 Gronau, Germany Vattenfall Europe Nuclear Energy GmbH, Germany Viscom AG, Carl-Buderus-Strae 9 - 15, 30455 Hannover, Germany
Finally, we would like to take this opportunity to thank many experts who very open-minded and friendly gave us many hints and pieces of advice: Anette Medin, Karin Reiche, Cornelia Wehrli, HansDieter Berger, Franz Brning, Douglas Crawford, Wolfgang Drr, Eberhard Grauf, Toyoshi Fuketa, Martin L. Grossbeck, Lars Hallstadius, Hans-Christoph Hippe, Mikael Hultfeldt, Armin Hermann, Michael Koebl, Alexander Scholl, Glenn Torstensson, Christian Wilson .
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Part I
A Birds-Eye View on Nuclear Technology
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1. The Dawn of Nuclear Energy

1.1 From Nuclear Threat to Nuclear Opportunity
The development and construction of nuclear power reactors originally served only the purpose to produce material for atomic bombs. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (6 and 9 August 1945) demonstrated the enormous amount of energy released by the ssion of uranium or plutonium. Subsequently, many politicians and scientists among them the Father of the Atomic Bomb Robert Oppenheimer (Figure 1.1) started to worry about the devastating effects and about ethic limits1 with regard to the use of nuclear power.
Figure 1.1: The Father of the Atomic Bomb Robert Oppenheimer2 ca. 1944.
In 1949, the former Soviet Union performed its rst atomic bomb test3 . Moreover, after Stalin had passed away, the Soviet Union began attempts in 1953 to establish cooperations in the eld of nuclear technology with developing countries. Simultaneously, also Great Britain and France were about to achieve the status of nuclear powers. In 1950, in addition to the Cold War, the Korean war had begun, which meant a confrontation between the two superpowers, so that a nuclear war appeared possible.
1 The role of ethics in quality and quality management is discussed in depth by August Mundel (1991). 2 Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) was the scientic director of the Manhattan Project, the project to develop the
atomic bomb during World War II. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Oppenheimer, November 2008. 3 Holloway (1994), p. 323.
Figure 1.2: The thirty-fourth President of the United States (1953-1961) Dwight D. Eisenhower4 .
The US judged the danger to be extremely high, particularly after the Soviet Union had successfully tested a hydrogen bomb. In this situation, under the direction of Robert Oppenheimer, the project Candor was planned with a series of six fteen minute, nation-wide Radio-TV talks to inform the public of the realities of the Age of Peril. However, instead of the Candor project, which aimed to demand greater efforts from the US citizen, President Eisenhower (Figure 1.2) launched the Atoms for Peace initiative, which was supposed to push back the nuclear military threat in favor of a civilian nuclear cooperation and competition. Eisenhower envisaged an atomicpool of ssionable material and joint scientic knowledge to be used for an international exploitation of nuclear energy 5 .
On the 8th of December 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered an address during the 470th Plenary Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, announcing the new nuclear US policy Atoms for Peace. In his speech (Figure 1.3) Eisenhower stated6 : The United States would be more than willing it would be proud to take up with others principally involved the development of plans whereby such peaceful use of atomic energy would be expedited. Of those principally involved the Soviet Union must, of course, be one.
Figure 1.3: Dwight D. Eisenhower delivering his speech Atoms for Peace in 1953, United Nations General.
Eisenhower completed his address with the following words that may be even now considered as the aim of nuclear industry: To the making of these fateful decisions, the United States pledges before you and therefore before the world its determination to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma to devote its entire heart and mind to nd the way by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life. Subsequently, the civilian atomic age started with the First United Nations International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, which took place between the 8th and 20th August 1955 in Geneva.
4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower , January 2009. 5 Hewlett and Holl (1989). 6 http://www.iaea.org/About/history_speech.html , November 2008.
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee had designed and fabricated a small nuclear reactor in just three months and transported it by air to Geneva. Called Project Aquarium (Figure 1.4) because it was a swimming pool type reactor, it served as a prototype for research reactors overseas that could be fuelled with the low-enrichment ssionable material contributed by the United States to the international stockpile7 .
Figure 1.4: The swimming pool reactor is shown to Dwight D. Eisenhower during the Geneva conference8 .
The demonstration of nuclear technology during the conference in Geneva was regarded as a platform for comparing the relative strengths of science in capitalist and communist societies9 . The conference marked a formidable impetus for research efforts, aiming at developing commercial nuclear concepts in many countries. Cooperation agreements were signed between the reactor producers in order to develop advanced types of nuclear reactors. In all, about 50 different reactor concepts were developed, amongst which the two water cooled and water moderated concepts (pressurized water reactor, PWR, and boiling water reactor, BWR) became widely accepted. The First United Nations International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy can be viewed as the turnaround of the public view on nuclear energy. The chance of obtaining an almost innite energy source replaced the fear of the disastrous effects of atomic bombs. Thousands of people of various countries came to Geneva to see the nuclear reactor in operation. Indeed, the success of the swimming pool reactor at the Geneva conference was overwhelming: More than 62,000 people, including kings, queens, presidents, and other dignitaries, queued up to see the reactors blue glow during the two-week-long conference. It became the most popular exhibit at the conference. Enrico Fermis wife subsequently labeled it the worlds most beautiful little reactor10 . The German journalist Manfred Kriener describes the almost unlimited enthusiasm among engineers, politicians and even philosophers for nuclear energy in the late 1950s. Nuclear energy was believed to be a source of free energy in all elds of application. Physicians hoped for new radioisotopes that would heal hitherto incurable diseases, and the German minister of agriculture was hoping that irradiated crops would defeat the world hunger. The Ford Company designed the futuristic car Nucleon whose source of power would be a nuclear reactor. Another atomic concept car named Fulgur (see Figure 1.5) was presented by Simca
7 http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev25-34/chapter4sb2.htm , October 2008. 8 http://www.iaea.org/About/history_speech.html , November 2008. 9 http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev25-34/chapter4.shtml , November 2008. 10 http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev25-34/chapter4.shtml , November 2008.
during the 1961 Chicago auto show. The German philosopher Ernst Bloch dreamt that in a blue atmosphere of peace, nuclear energy would create fertile lands from deserts and springtime from ice. He thought that some hundred pounds of uranium and thorium would be sufcient to make the Sahara and the Gobi Desert disappear and to turn Sibiria and North America, Greenland and Antarctica into a Riviera.11 In France12 , the company Framatome13 , founded on the 1st December of 1958 by the companies Schneider Group, Empain, Merlin Grin and Westinghouse, began to produce pressurized water reactors (PWR) based on the Westinghouse concept. Another holder of a Westinghouse PWR license was Mitsubishi from Japan. In the Federal Republic of Germany14 , the company Siemens-Schuckertwerke placed a license agreement with Westinghouse that became effective in June 1957, resulting in a concept to build pressurized water reactors (PWR). The German company AEG-Telefunken AG15 cooperated with General Electric, which favored boiling water reactors (BWR). In addition, the Brown Boveri Reaktor GmbH became license holder for the concept of pressurized water reactors from Babcock & Wilcox.
Figure 1.5: The atomic car Fulgur of Simca, France, during the 1961 Chicago Auto Show16 .
The episode of the swimming pool reactor at the Geneva conference shows how the opportunities and dangers of nuclear energy were misjudged by experts and the public in the 1950s. For instance, Homi Bhabha, an Indian Physicist, Nobel Prize Winner and president of the Conference, predicted in all seriousness that controlled nuclear fusion, which promised limitless cheap electricity, would be mastered within twenty years17 . Nowadays, subjective judgements on risks and benets of nuclear energy are still prevailing as reected especially in the public opinion. One of the tasks of quality management of nuclear installations is therefore linked to an objective assessment of nuclear energy. An objective assessment must not be based on subjective postulates and assumptions, but on a veried stochastic model developed on the basis of the available decade-long experiences. A stochastic model needs a newly developed technique to mirror the relation between past and future. Based on a stochastic model18 reliable and accurate predictions can be obtained that are necessary to assess objectively both risks and benets of nuclear energy.
1.2
Quality Management of Nuclear Installations
Quality management means all decisions and activities that aim at maintaining or at improving an already achieved level of quality. Quality of nuclear plants or nuclear fuel fabrication facilities refers to its future performance with respect to safety and protability. A nuclear installation is of high quality if three conditions are fullled:
11 Cited according to Krieger (2006): . . . in einer blauen Atmosphre des Friedens aus Wsten Fruchtland, aus Eis Frhling schaen. Einige hundert Pfund Uranium and Thorium werden ausreichen, um die Sahara und die Wste Gobi verschwinden lassen, Sibirien und Nordamerik, Grnland und die Antarktis zur Riviera zu verwandeln. 12 A. Michel, 1995. 13 Framatome = Franco-Amricaine de Constructions Atomiques. 14 Krug (1998). 15 AEG = Allgemeine Electricitts-Gesellschaft. 16 http://www.carstyling.ru/en/cars.1958_Simca_Fulgur.html, October 2008. 17 http://www.iaea.org/About/history.html, November 2008. 18 A stochastic model is to be understood in contrast to the deterministic models in physics and the probabilistic models in statistics. In contrast to these models, a stochastic model utilizes the complete available knowledge about a process to describe realistically the variability in the process outcome.
a) b) c)
Safety of the operation is assured as a necessary condition during the entire lifetime of the installation. Maximum protability of the installation during its entire lifetime should be achieved. The disposal of nuclear waste is organized in a way that at no time radioactivity will harm the environment.
Looking at the above points more closely shows that the safety of nuclear installations constitutes a side condition, while the protability represents the objective19 . The safety requirement is valid for any industrial facility, however, in the nuclear eld, it has a special signicance. This is due to: its origin from the most devastating military weapon; to the large potential consequences of any hypothetical accident in a nuclear installation.
As to the rst condition (a), a tight quality management of a nuclear installation is of crucial importance. Accidents like those in Three Mile Island and in Chernobyl which occurred due to mistakes done by reactor operators must be avoided by any means and this handbook wants to enable the development of strategies to prevent such incidents. Secondly (b), it is correct that protability is the only task for quality management. However, this view could turn out to be very shortsighted if it does not extend to the entire lifetime of the installation. A quality management must assure protability from the rst to the last day of operation. Consequently, it is of utmost importance that quality management develops and implements policies that maintain the well-functioning of material and staff. The third condition (c) mentioned above refers to environmental contamination and is generally divided into the contamination for producing nuclear fuel and the contamination related to nuclear waste arising during and after the operation of the installation. It is to be foreseen that in the future the signicance of this condition will increase because of nancial reasons and of reasons related to the general public acceptance of nuclear energy. Quality management related to the above stated three conditions (a through c) is successful if the involved processes, including their inherent uncertainties, are known and controlled. With knowledge of a specic process we mean that there is a sufciently realistic quantitative model that describes realistically the variability in the process outcomes. For example, two fuel pellets produced by the same process will have different values of the quality characteristics such as diameter and density. A stochastic model describes this variability and can be used as the basis for designing and implementing strategies for preventing any costly incident. The objective of FQMH-I is to give an overview of all important processes involved in the nuclear fuel cycle. In general, the responsibility for the operation of an industrial facility is clearly dened, and the managers in charge can easily be identied. However, this situation is more complex in the nuclear eld. In the case of a nuclear installation, the responsibilities are shared by the operating company, the regulator (safety authority) in the specic country and its expert organizations, the suppliers, and certain international associations. Furthermore, the responsibilities do not end with decommissioning of the nuclear installation, but instead also cover the management of spent fuel, radioactive waste and the complete dismantling of the installation. Obviously, the quality management of a nuclear installation constitutes a unique challenge, since it requires the cooperation of rather different organizations. Moreover, quality management has to take into account the public concern of nuclear energy that is inherently associated with nuclear bombs, the Windscale re20 , the Three Mile accident21 , and the Chernobyl accident22 . One of the tasks of a quality management is to put these incidents into a general perspective of human activities. A successful nuclear fuel management must convincingly show that the dangers for the human society emanating from nuclear industry are much
19 A side condition constitutes a requirement that has to be met necessarily and which limits the set of possible strategies, while an objective represents a criterion for selecting the best strategy within the set of possible ones. 20 In October 1957, the graphite core of a British nuclear reactor at Windscale, Cumberland, caught re and radioactivity was released before the re could nally be put out. 21 The Three Mile Island Accident, Pennsylvania, in the USA took place in 1979 and led to a partial core meltdown of one of the reactors of the PWR nuclear power plant. 22 The Chernobyl accident, Ukraine, in the former Soviet Union took place in 1986 and was the worst nuclear power plant accident in the history of nuclear technology.
better controlled than for many other systems23 . Such a proof must be based on models of the involved uncertainties about the future developments implying that models should be based on stochastic methods and the introduction of the relevant methodology is therefore another objective of the handbook. The following introductory sections shall briey describe the different process involved in the nuclear fuel cycle and the arising quality management issues
1.3
The Nuclear Fuel Cycle
The term nuclear fuel cycle includes all activities from uranium mining, enrichment, nuclear fuel fabrication, using the fuel in reactors, and to recycling or disposing the spent fuel. The fuel cycle starts with the geophysical exploration, prospecting, mining and the milling of uranium ore. Subsequently, the uranium ore passes through a number of processing steps which consist of conversion, enrichment, and fuel fabrication until it is used for lling the fuel rods and fuel assemblies that are used to generate heat in a reactor. The cycle ends with the storage, the reprocessing, and nally the disposal of spent fuel and radioactive waste that results from the production of nuclear fuel, the operation of the nuclear reactors and the reprocessing of spent fuel. The nuclear fuel cycle (see Figure 1.6) may be divided into four more or less independent processes, namely: mining and milling of uranium ore; conversion and enrichment of uranium; fuel fabrication; producing energy in a reactor; storing, reprocessing, and disposing of spent fuel and radioactive waste.
Figure 1.6: Nuclear fuel life cycle disposal; HLW - High Level Waste; MOX - Mixed Oxide Fuel24 .
A very distinct and unique feature of nuclear fuel is the length of its life cycle compared to the cycles of any other energy source. While the operating cycle of coal, oil or gas may be measured in months, the nuclear fuel cycle takes 100 thousands of years related to the decay of some of the radioactive nuclides with long half lives.
23 The global systems were moved close to a breakdown by the current nancial crisis, the traditional way of producing energy led to a climate change that is threatening the existence of millions, etc. 24 http://www-nfcis.iaea.org/NFCIS/NFCISMAin.asp, September 2008.
The different stages of the nuclear fuel life cycle for about 24 t of uranium fuel, which is approximately the annual fuel consumption of a 1000 MWe light water reactor, are visualized in Figure 1.6. It begins with the input of about 45 - 50, 000 t of uranium ore from mining that are converted into about 170 t of uranium in the form of uranium oxide known as yellow cake. Conversion is carried out by crushing, grinding, leaching and solvent extraction. The tail contains certain decay products, heavy metals and radon, in addition to acid and other materials used in the milling process. The environmental impact by mining as well as cleanup of the hazardous tailings is often not looked at as a problem for the nuclear fuel management. However, in view of the public concerns with respect to nuclear industry, also these problems must be considered by nuclear fuel management. There are two main types of nuclear fuel namely uranium oxide (UO2 ) fuel and mixed oxide fuel (MOX (U , Pu)O2 ) which contains uranium oxide and plutonium oxide. The manufacturing of both types is described in detail in Chapter 7. Here, the MOX fuel is taken as an example to illustrate the fuel cycle. Before the uranium oxide is passed to the next step, it may be mixed with about 24 t of uranium from the reprocessing of spent fuel25 . (The reprocessed uranium is also called REPU and according to OECD/NEA (2001b), p. 39, might play an increasing role in a sustainable development context.) The subsequent conversion process yields natural uranium hexauoride (UF6 ) for the enrichment process. The enrichment process results in about 220 t of depleted uranium, also called uranium tail that leaves the cycle and 24 t of enriched uranium hexauoride. In the case of fabrication of MOX fuel about 230 kg of plutonium, provided by reprocessing, together with the uranium dioxide (UO2 ) is used to produce mixed oxide (MOX) fuel pellets. The depleted uranium needs to be taken care off to minimize the environmental impact. Presently, depleted uranium is increasingly used for ammunition and armor plates because of its high density, being about 70% larger than that of lead. In fact the status of depleted uranium is not clear. Sometime it is considered as a valuable resource for the future production of energy and sometimes as nuclear waste. The electricity produced by nuclear reactors leaves the fuel cycle, while the spent uranium is stored for many years in so-called spent fuel storage pools until decay heat (due to decay of short-lived radioactive isotopes) has decreased signicantly. When the radioactivity of the spent fuel has decreased sufciently, it may be taken to a reprocessing plant. The output of the reprocessing plant consists of recovered uranium, isolated plutonium, and high-level radioactive waste. The latter is vitried in blocks of Pyrex glass that are contained in stainless steel canisters. Eventually, the nuclear waste that remains must be stored in a nal repository. The commercial quality management of nuclear fuel begins with the fuel procurement approximately two years before the refuelling of a reactor and ends when the fuel is stored in the spent fuel pool or reprocessed in a reprocessing plant. The environmental issues arising from radioactive and non-radioactive waste produced at various stages of the nuclear fuel cycle are subject of ongoing scrutiny and evaluation. Actually, the environmental issues are addressed by many national and international agreements and regulations on the control and handling of relevant processes and materials. The agreements are being improved as technology and public policy evolves. The internationalization of civilian nuclear technology is one of its characteristic features. In fact, almost each stage of the nuclear fuel cycle is regulated by international agreements and restrictions that include numerous accounting and auditing procedures. Moreover, the contracts concerning nuclear fuel reect the internationalization within the nuclear eld. An example is given below to illustrate the fact that quality management of nuclear fuel is faced by global issues. A typical contract for the sale of Australian or Canadian uranium oxide concentrate to an electricity generating utility in Belgium for example, could rst entail shipment to the USA for conversion to uranium hexauoride. The equivalent quantity of uranium hexauoride might then be sent from USA to the Russia for enrichment, and then on to a fuel fabrication plant in Germany to be turned into uranium dioxide, before going into the core of a reactor owned by the Belgian utility with whom the sale was originally contracted. Later, the spent fuel from the reactor may go to the UK or France for reprocessing.26
25 Note that in most countries reprocessed fuel is currently not used. 26 http://www.world-nuclear.org/education/nfc.htm, October 2008.
Because of the particularities of nuclear energy, the power plant operator and the fuel supplier are much more linked together than in other industrial elds. However, the power plant operator bears the ultimate responsibility for the safe and protable use of nuclear fuel. Therefore, for dealing with the public concerns it makes sense that the quality management of nuclear fuel considers the entire life cycle of the fuel, starting with mining and ending with its nal disposal. In the rst volume of this quality management handbook, the different processes and technical details are listed that signicantly affect safety and protability and, thus, have to be taken into account by a successful quality management of nuclear fuel. The subsequent volumes of the handbook treat the corresponding quality management issues related to these processes. In the following subsections, the various stages of the nuclear fuel cycle mentioned above are described briey from a birds eye view.
1.3.1
Mining and Milling
The mining and milling of uranium ore represent the rst stages of the nuclear fuel cycle. In 2006, uranium was produced in 20 countries27 . The largest producer was Canada with 25%, followed by Australia with 19% and Kazahkstan with 13%, Niger with 13%, the Russian Federation with 8%, Namibia with 8%, Uzbekistan with 6% and the United States with 5%. France, Germany and Hungary produced a minor amount of uranium as a consequence of mine remediation efforts28 . Although the special environmental issues related to uranium mining are well known, the concerns focussed mainly on the health of the workers. Only recently, these concerns have been extended to the full range of operational activities related to uranium mining. Because of the large quantity, uranium mill tails are of special signicance from an environmental point of view. Although, the following issues are related to the mining process and not to the production of energy, the nuclear fuel quality management must be based on all issues involved. In a report29 of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) the following points of concern with respect to the uranium mill tails are listed: the tail retain much of the radioactivity of the ore from which it was derived; the tail radioactivity is very long lived; the tail contains a range of biotoxic heavy metals and other components; the tail contains sulphide minerals which can generate acid mine drainage; the tail granular to slime consistency makes them susceptible to leaching, erosion or collapse under various conditions; the common method of surface tail disposal exposes a large tail surface area to the natural elements and thus increases the risk of release of radiation, radioactivity and geochemically toxic dusts, and interaction with surface water systems; the large tail surface area of these deposits (or piles) adversely affects large areas of land and renders potentially valuable land unt for other uses.
1.3.2
Conversion and Enrichment
The primary aim of developing nuclear technology during World War II were nuclear weapons. Therefore, two tasks had to be solved: rstly, enough uranium had to be obtained and converted to the gaseous compound uranium hexauoride (see Section 7.3); secondly, a much more difcult task was the enrichment of the uranium isotope U-235 in order to obtain weapons-grade uranium and ssile uranium for producing plutonium in a nuclear reactor.
Group, (UMREG) is a network of organizations being involved in the remediation of closed uranium mining and ore processing facilities.
29 IAEA (2005a), p.1. 27 OECD/NEA, IAEA (2008), p. 37. 28 The Uranium Mine Remediation Exchange
The construction of enrichment facilities, thus, had an ultimate priority within the Manhattan Project30 . In 1942, three huge enrichment plants were constructed in the Oak Ridge area, Tennessee, aiming at yielding a sufcient amount of the ssile uranium isotope U-235 for the planned U-235 atomic bombs31 and the breeding of enough plutonium for Pu-239 atomic bombs. Four methods were proposed for U-235 isotope separation32 , namely the gaseous diffusion method, the gaseous centrifuge method, the liquid thermal diffusion method, and the electromagnetic isotope separation method. The centrifuge separation method was abandoned, because it was not deemed possible at that time to spin a rotator at high enough speeds for large scale isotopic separation33 . The other three were carried out in the following facilities: The Y-12 plant used electromagnetic isotope separation and already began its operation in November 1943. The K-25 plant (see Figure 1.7) used gaseous diffusion for the enrichment. Its construction started in June 1943 and was completed early in 1945.
Figure 1.7: The Oak Ridge K-25 plant for gaseous diffusion enrichment of uranium hexauoride34 .
The S-50 plant used the liquid thermal diffusion method and started operating on the 16th of September 1944, after only three months of construction time.
In Figure 1.8, the production of the weapons grade U-235, used for the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, is displayed schematically. Figure 1.8 illustrates the different enrichment techniques developed and applied during the war time in the USA which did not include the gaseous centrifuge technique.
S-50 Thermal Diffusion
Y-12 Beta Calutrons
K-25 Gaseous Diffusion
Y-12 Alpha Calutrons
Figure 1.8: Serial enrichment of UF6 in the three enrichment plants of Oak Ridge for obtaining an 90% U-235 content35 .
30 The Manhattan Engineer District (MED) contained all activities of the USA during World War II to develop and build an atomic bomb. It was directed by General Leslie R. Groves and the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. 31 The Hiroshima atomic bomb was a U-235 bomb (named Little Boy), while the Nagasaki bomb was a plutonium bomb (named Fat Man). 32 http://www.atomicarchive.com/History/mp/p2s15.shtml, November 2008. 33 http://www.chemcases.com/nuclear/nc-07.html, November 2008. 34 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-25, November 2008. 35 http://www.chemcases.com/nuclear/nc-07.html, November 2008.
The overhasty decisions made in war times with respect to the enrichment process had two negative consequences, lasting until the present days. Firstly, the disregard of environmental issues that still have not been resolved36 ; secondly, the selection of the enrichment technology itself. By disregarding the gaseous centrifuge technique, the course was set for many future decisions in the United States against this technology (see the subsections 7.4.4 and 7.4.5). The wrong assessment of the centrifuge technique led to the current situation that the countries with enrichment based on the diffusion technique (USA, France) are at a disadvantage to those applying the centrifuge technique (Russia, Germany, The Netherlands, Great Britain). Currently, France and the USA are in a process of change to the centrifuge techniques. However, the wrong war decision led and leads to huge excess expenditures. The overall nuclear fuel fabrication process depends very much on the type of reactor selected. Those countries that started nuclear technology for military purposes had U-235 enrichment facilities available. Therefore, they decided in favor of reactors requiring enriched nuclear fuel. In contrast, most countries without their own enrichment plants decided for reactors that could operate with natural uranium.
1.3.3
Producing Electric Energy
After the Atoms for Peace initiative had been launched, a civilian technological race began. Its aim was to solve the energy problem in a sustainable way. Although the race was performed by companies, the differences in the national starting points became a decisive factor in the relevant decision making processes. Immediately after the war, only the allied nations of World War II, i.e., the USA, Soviet Union, Great Britain and France, had the ability to develop the nuclear technology. There were enrichment facilities in the United States and in the Soviet Union, both of which had developed the nuclear technology for military purposes. Therefore, in these countries a reactor technology was developed that was based on slightly enriched nuclear fuel. In France, Great Britain and Canada on the other hand, reactors were designed that used natural uranium as fuel. Today, most of the operating nuclear reactors use enriched U-235 fuel for generating electricity.
1.3.4
Fuel Fabrication
Nuclear fuel fabrication for light water power plants consists of two consecutive processes. During the rst process, the enriched uranium in the form of uranium hexauoride is converted to uranium dioxide powder. The powder is cold-pressed and then sintered yielding ceramic uranium dioxide pellets. In the second process, tubes called fuel rods are manufactured, serving as containers of the uranium dioxide pellets, and fuel assemblies are produced combining a large number of fuel rods in a fuel bundle.
1.3.5
Waste Management
Nuclear waste accrues at each of the stages of the nuclear fuel cycle and represents the most difcult challenge for the nuclear fuel quality management. The waste issue has to be seen particularly in relation to the public concern about nuclear energy. While the technical problems of producing energy in nuclear reactors safely can be looked upon as being solved, this is different with the waste issue. Although being primarily an issue of the involved states, the management of nuclear facilities should not disregard the waste issue, because if it is not resolved, then the existence of the entire nuclear industry is endangered. Often, front-end waste and back-end waste are considered separately. Front end waste stems from the different cycle stages before electricity is generated, while the back-end waste arises when the fuel has been discharged from the core. As mentioned earlier, radioactive and poisonous waste in solid, liquid and gaseous form is due to mining and the extraction of the uranium. The uranium enrichment process also yields another large amount of waste in the form of depleted uranium. Most of it is being stored as uranium hexauoride (UF6 ) in steel cylinders. Chemically, uranium hexauoride is a very reactive substance that with water forms the extremely corrosive hydrouoric acid and the highly toxic uranyl uoride (UO2 F2 ). For long-term storage or disposal of the depleted UF6 , it must be converted into a less reactive chemical form. However, many of the related issues are so far not answered
36 Gerber (1992), pp. 171-218.
among them, as mentioned earlier, the question whether depleted uranium should be regarded as waste or as a valuable resource. The back-end waste is divided into low-level waste, intermediate-level waste and high-level waste. Lowlevel waste is often incinerated or incinerated and compacted and then buried. Intermediate-level waste is often solidied and buried or disposed in the deep underground. High-level waste (i.e. discharged nuclear fuel) is sometimes partly reprocessed and used again as fuel. By reprocessing spent fuel, the amount of waste is greatly reduced. However, the nal disposal of high-level waste is still an unsolved problem. At present, high-level waste is mainly stored in so-called storage ponds (see Figure 1.9).
Figure 1.9: Storage pond37 for spent fuel at a UK reprocessing plan.
At present times, it is planned to dispose these wastes underground as soon as adequate underground sites have been identied and established. However, so far no such site has been opened, although Sweden and Finland have made decision about the locations of the nal repositories.
37 http://www.world-nuclear.org/education/wast.htm, November, 2008.
2. Energy Source
2.1 The Signicance of Fuel
The classication of fuel assemblies follows the type of fuel and the type of moderator material used. The structure of the fuel elements depends on the type of reactor in which they are used. In almost all countries utilizing nuclear energy, the economic light-water reactors have become accepted. They are operated as pressurized water reactors (PWR) or boiling water reactors (BWR). The fuel is exhausted during operation as its physical and chemical composition is changed by nuclear ssion. After about four years of operation, the ssionable uranium isotope U-235 is reduced from about 4-5% to about 1%, while about 1% plutonium is generated from the non-ssionable uranium isotope U-238. Additionally, some neutron absorbing ssion products (neutron poison) have formed. Primarily due to the formation of neutron poison it is necessary to remove the spent fuel from the reactor and exchange it by new fuel. The exchange is carried out in the framework of periodic refueling operations of the nuclear power plant, where between one fourth to half (dependent of the cycle length, longer cycle lengths require a larger fraction of fuel being replaced) of the nuclear fuel in the core is removed and exchanged by new, enriched fuel. The operators of nuclear power plants procure the necessary fuel assemblies from the fuel supplier. The supply chain does not only involve two parties, but includes various subcontractors. Safety and quality of the fuel assemblies are secured in the framework of the supply transactions by additional quality assurance and control agreements. The costs of nuclear fuel and reactor operation are the only costs that can be controlled directly by the plant operator after the commissioning of the nuclear power plant. Therefore, the fuel cost has been in the focus of discussion for years. The nuclear disposal cost on the other hand that amount to about 50% to 60% of the entire cost of the nuclear fuel life cycle (ore mining, enrichment, fuel fabrication and fuel disposal) are subject to strong political inuence, so that it is hardly possible to make a reliable accounting. This is particularly true for Germany, as the government has exclusively approved direct nal disposal, but has questioned all the hitherto made considerations about the capacity of the disposal sites. Because of above described circumstances, the cost reduction efforts of the power plant operators focus on the reduction of the cost for the fuel assemblies even though these costs amount to about only 10% of the total fuel life-cycle costs or only about 3% of the entire operation costs that include the cost for fuel assembly, the operation cost and the cost to build and decommision the nuclear power plant. However, it must not be forgotten that even small cost reductions represent a large saving potential in view of the absolute cost. It may be pointed out that due to the fact that the uranium price is so small compared to the total fuel cycle cost, even a dramatic increase in the uranium price will hardly impact the cost to produce electricity. This is another difference between nuclear energy and the energy based on fossil fuels. One possibility to lower the costs are improvements in the neutron economy that constituted the starting point for advancements of fuel assemblies. Many fuel design changes followed that will be discussed in this handbook; for instance the replacement of steel and Inconel1 by zirconium alloys for the fuel assembly structural materials and the change from out-in reloading to in-out reloading are to be mentioned. Further changes included an increased coolant inlet temperature in pressurized water reactors to improve the efciency. All of these steps were associated with continuous development of the fuel assembly structural materials and, in particular, the cladding material. Another noteworthy development was the onset of competition between fuel vendors. Formerly, both the
1 Inconel is a registered trademark of Special Metals Corporation that refers to a family of austenitic nickel-chromiumbased superalloys.
building of a power plant and the supply of fuel assemblies used to be from one source. For this reason, there was no competition, and the power plant operator had to rely on only one supplier. The price for the fuel was xed by the power plant builder; i.e., there was a classical sellers market. In 1980, attempts were made to establish competition in the different countries. For the German market, the American EXXON Nuclear and the French FRAGEMA were selected as additional suppliers besides Kraftwerkunion (KWU) of Siemens. By establishing competition the price for nuclear fuel dropped by 50%. The time when the fuel cost decreased was also characterized by the fact that no new nuclear power plant was built due to the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. The accidents led to delays in the licensing process and, hence, to increased plant costs, which diminished the economic attractiveness of nuclear energy. These conditions also led to an over-capacity on the sides of the fuel suppliers. This effect was further increased by the premature shutdown of nuclear power plants, which led to a reduced demand for reload fuel assemblies. Moreover, the deregulation and globalization of the electricity markets forced the fuel suppliers and the power plant operators to further cost reductions to maintain the competitiveness of nuclear power. The high absolute cost involved in nuclear power and the complex nature of nuclear technology made an efcient quality assurance necessary as the occurrence of even a small incident may cause an extremely high economic loss. In this context, it soon became clear that preventive or active quality assurance is preferable to reactive quality assurance. The focus of a reactive quality assurance program is monitoring and reacting on identied irregularities by repair actions. In contrast, an active quality assurance program concentrates on preventing the occurrence of irregularities. The requirement of an active quality assurance is crucial and will be a central issue of the subsequent management parts of this handbook. Of course, the quality assurance strategy should not only be active, but also based on an up-to-date methodology, since it is impossible to maintain future success with outdated tools and strategies. Consequently, the methods for active and reactive quality assurance are another focus of the handbook. The old methods will be analyzed and new ones will be proposed as alternatives for an effective preventive maintenance of nuclear power plants.
2.2
Generations of Nuclear Reactors
The utilization of nuclear fuel takes place in nuclear reactors. The development of commercial reactors was taken up in the United States, Soviet Union, Great Britain and France immediately after Eisenhowers Atoms for Peace initiative. There are various classication schemes for reactors. The most common classication criteria are the cooling system, the neutron energy, the moderator, and the type of fuel. The various combinations of these characteristics are called nuclear reactor lines. For example, there are the water cooled reactor line, the gas cooled reactor line, and liquid metal cooled reactor line. Besides the reactor lines, different generations of reactors reect the state of technology. Nowadays, four different generations are distinguished. As a rule of thumb, it is said that the safety has increased with an order of magnitude between each generation due to reactor design changes. Thus, the probability for a nuclear accident is estimated about 100 times smaller for a third generation reactor compared to a rst generation reactor.
2.2.1
First Generation Reactors
The rst generation covers the time from the 1950s to the 1970s. During this time, reactors were mainly built by companies from the United States, Soviet Union, Great Britain and France. Only six reactors of the rst generation with start-up in the 1960s are still in operation. The oldest ones are two Magnox reactors (Oldbury-1 and Oldbury-2) at Thornbury, Gloucestershire, England. In the United States, the rst land-based reactor was built at Shippingport with pressurized water as coolant and moderator, requiring enriched uranium fuel (see Figure 2.1). In Great Britain (Magnox) and France, the natural uranium-graphite-gas line was introduced, using graphite as moderator and carbon dioxide as coolant. They were operated with natural uranium fuel.
In the Soviet Union, the RBMK reactors2 were developed, using graphite as the moderator, boiling water as the coolant and natural uranium fuel. In 2009, eleven RBMK reactors were in operation in Russia and the Ukraine.
Figure 2.1: The rst full-scale PWR nuclear power plant at Shippingport in the USA3 .
Many of the rst generation reactors were built to meet two purposes, namely to produce energy and to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.
2.2.2
Second Generation Reactors
The second generation covers the period from the 1960s to the 1990s. During this period, most of the reactors operating in 2009 were built. In contrast to the rst generation reactors, they were built only for the purpose of producing electricity. The Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) became the most common type (see Figure 2.2). About 60% of all nuclear reactors of the second generation belong to this type. The fuel of this type of reactor consists of sintered pellets, made of enriched uranium dioxide with a content of about 4% ssionable uranium isotope U-235. The pellets are contained in fuel rods that are held together by support plates and spacer grids to form fuel assemblies. PWRs were built particularly in France. The VVER reactor is a Russian type PWR reactor. The rst version where the VVER440 with (440 MWe) which were replaced by the more advanced design VVER1000 with (1000 MWe). The VVER reactors are primarily found in Russia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe.
Figure 2.2: The PWR at Biblis4 (Germany), the worldwide largest nuclear power plant at its commissioning in 1974.
2 The reactor of Chernobyl was one of this type. 3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shippingport_Atomic_Power_Station, January 2009.
3. International Networking
3.1 The Role of International Organizations
From the very beginning, the civil exploitation of nuclear energy was truly international. Nuclear installations and activities are coordinated and controlled by international organizations. In addition, scientic research as well as technical developments are carried out on an international platform. Besides those international organizations which promote the development and utilization of nuclear energy, there are others that consider nuclear technology as a danger to the environment and the human societies. These try to mobilize the public in order to abolish nuclear weapons and to shut down nuclear power plants or at least make the operation of nuclear power plants more difcult. Such organizations may have an indirect, but nevertheless substantial impact on the protability of nuclear power plants and should therefore not be underestimated. For a successful quality management in the nuclear fuel cycle it is important to know the roles, aims and tools of the relevant organizations. A comprehensive list is given in this chapter, where the most important ones related to quality management of the nuclear fuel cycle are described in more detail. There are several kinds of international organizations working in the eld of nuclear energy, where the main difference between the organizations lie in their membership as follows: state memberships; industrial memberships; public memberships; scientic memberships; individual memberships.
The international and, to a minor degree, the national organizations that support nuclear energy assume the tasks of controlling nuclear activities, of preparing standards for the different processes, of supporting cooperative scientic research and technical development, of providing information, and of maintaining relevant data bases with respect to all stages of the nuclear fuel cycle. The national regulatory bodies1 which set up the safety criteria and also control that the criteria are met are covered in the second volume of this handbook, and thus are not treated here. This chapter serves to illustrate the global character of nuclear energy that has to be taken into account by quality management despite the many national regulations and requirements.
3.2
Comprehensive Overview
This section aims at briey introducing the involved international organizations. In many cases, they evolved from national ones.
3.2.1
State Membership
From the very beginning, the development of nuclear technology was rather a task of the involved states than a task of the involved industrial companies. This fact is reected in the many international organiza1 For example the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in the USA or the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) in Japan.
tions with state membership. These organizations organize, maintain and control nuclear technology on a worldwide scale. Below, they are briey introduced in alphabetical order. Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials2 (ABACC): Formed by the governments of Brazil and Argentina in 1991, the Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials is an entity responsible for verifying that the nuclear materials existing in both countries are being used exclusively for peaceful purposes. Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO)3 : The Comprehensive Nuclear-TestBan Treaty Organization was established according to Article II of the Comprehensive Nuclear-TestBan Treaty4 to achieve the aims of the treaty, namely to ban all nuclear explosions in all environments, and serve as a forum for its members. A Preparatory Commission was established in 1996 with Vienna being its seat. European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN): CERN was founded in 1954 and has presently twenty European member states. It runs the world largest particle physics laboratory, which is located near Geneva. Its budget for the year 2008 provided by the member states, totals about 664 million Euro. During 2009, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the worlds largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, has been in repair after an incident that occurred during commissioning. The total cost of the LHC-project is expected to be 3.2 to 6.4 billion Euro after an estimated cost of about 1.6 billion Euro when the project5 was started. European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM): EURATOM was established in 1957 by the Treaty of Rome. It is completely controlled by the European Union. EURATOMs objectives are to build and maintain a market for nuclear power, to develop nuclear energy and sell electricity surplus to non-Community States. Presently, EURATOM is strongly involved in the international project of developing the fusion reactor ITER6 . EURATOM Supply Agency7 : The EURATOM Supply Agency was established by the EURATOM Treaty and began its operation in 1960. Its objective is to ensure a regular and adequate supply of nuclear fuel to Community users. According to the EURATOM Treaty, the Supply Agency has the optional right to acquire ores, source material8 and, special ssile material produced within the Community. It also has an exclusive right to authorised and set up contracts for the supply of such materials from inside or outside the Community. International Atomic Energy Agency9 (IAEA): The IAEA was proposed by President Eisenhower in his Atoms for Peace speech in 1953. In 1957, it was established as an autonomous intergovernmental organization by an international treaty (IAEA Statute) for serving the peaceful use of nuclear technology throughout the world. IAEA reports to both the UN General assembly and the Security Council. International Science & Technological Center10 (ISTC): The International Science and Technology Center is an intergovernmental institution that was established in 1992 by agreement of the European Union, Japan, the Russian Federation and the USA. Presently, the ISTC has 13 member countries. ISTC funds international scientic projects of scientists from Russia, Georgia and other countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States11 (CIS) to be carried out in Canada, the EU, Japan, Republic of Korea, Norway and the United States. Nuclear Energy Agency12 (NEA): The Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) is an intergovernmental organization within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), representing
2 http://www.abacc.org/home.htm, January 2009. 3 http://www.ctbto.org/, January 2009. 4 In 1996, 71 states signed the Treaty. As of 15 April 2008, it has been signed by 178 states as announced by the CTBTO. The treaty will enter into force 180 days after all 44 states listed in Annex 2 have ratied it. Of the Annex 2-states, the United States of America, the Peoples Republic of China, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, Egypt, Indonesia and Iran have not ratied the treaty so far. 5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider, November 2008. 6 The fusion of deuterium D2 and tritium T 3 to helium He4 releases about 17 MeV . The ITER-project shall show demonstrte 1 2 1 the feasibility of fusion power. 7 http://ec.europa.eu/euratom/index_en.html, January 2009. 8 The term source material refers either to the element thorium or to the element uranium, provided that the uranium has not been enriched in the isotope uranium-235. 9 http://www.iaea.org/, January 2009. 10 http://www.istc.ru/istc/istc.nsf/fa_MainPageMultiLang?OpenForm&lang=Eng, January 2009. 11 The Commonwealth of Independent States was founded in 1991 and is a confederation of countries of the former Soviet Union. 12 http://www.nea.fr/html/welcome.html, January 2009.
at present 28 countries in Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacic region. Its mission is to assist its member countries to maintain and further develop the scientic, technological and legal bases required for the peaceful use of nuclear energy. NEA maintains an information sharing forum and a center for pooling technical expertise, for policy analyzes and for developing consensus if there are technical issues. Nuclear Suppliers Group13 (NSG): The NSG was established after Indias rst nuclear explosion conducted on the 18th of May 1974. It has currently more than 40 member countries. Its main objective is to develop guidelines for the transfer of nuclear materials and nuclear-related dual-use equipment14 in order to prevent the misuse of nuclear material. Organization for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean15 (OPANAL): OPANAL is an intergovernmental agency established by the Treaty of Tlatelolco that has been in force since 1969 and prohibits nuclear weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean. The members are all the 33 states in Latin America and in the Caribbean and the objective of OPANAL is to ensure that the obligations of the treaty are met.
3.2.2
Industrial Membership
Another type of organization represents the industry. These are important for the exchange of information, cooperation and promotion of the industrial interest related to international regulations. The relevant organizations are listed and briey discussed below, again in alphabetically order. Association for Regional and International Underground Storage16 (ARIUS): on the 22nd of February 2002, the Association for Regional and International Underground Storage was founded by is from the following ve countries: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Belgium (ONDRAF Waste Agency); Bulgaria (Kozloduy Power Plant); Hungary (PURAM Waste Agency); Japan (Obayashi Corporation); Switzerland (Colenco Power Engineering, backed by two of the Swiss nuclear power utilities).
The objective of ARIUS is to support the concept of sharing facilities for storage and disposal of all types of long-lived radioactive waste by promoting concepts for socially acceptable, international and regional solutions. European Nuclear Society17 (ENS): The European Nuclear Society was founded in 1975 by the national nuclear societies from 24 countries located from the Atlantic to the Pacic. Its objective is to promote and coordinate the activities of its members on an international level. Forum Atomique Europen18 (FORATOM): Two years after the Treaties of Rome19 had been signed in 1957 by six countries (France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, and The Netherlands), the nuclear organizations of the same countries founded FORATOM. The objective of FORATOM is to promote the interests of the European nuclear industry. This objective has not changed since then, and FORATOM is currently representing member associations from 17 countries and about 800 companies involved in nuclear technology20 . International Nuclear Societies Council21 (INSC): The INSC was founded in 1990 by the International Nuclear Societies Group, a consortium of national nuclear societies. INSC is organized in ve geographical groups: Asia-Pacic, Europe, Latin America, North America and the rest of the world. The council is a discussion forum and represents the interests of those working in the nuclear eld.
13 http://www.nuclearsuppliersgroup.org/, January 2009. 14 Dual-use is a term used for technology which can be used for both peaceful and military purposes. 15 http://opanal.org/, January 2009. 16 http://www.arius-world.org/, November 2008. 17 http://www.euronuclear.org/, January 2009. 18 http://www.foratom.org/, January 2009. 19 In 1957 two treaties were signed in Rome, the rst established the European Economic Community (EEC) and the
second established the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or EURATOM).

20 http://www.foratom.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=50, January 2009. 21 http://www.ne.jp/asahi/mh/u/, January 2009.
4. Materials
4.1 Introduction to Material Science
The generation of energy by nuclear ssion requires fuel and a process for the release and exploitation of the energy. Subsequently, the spent fuel is reprocessed or disposed of. For each step of this cycle, different materials are needed. To successfully apply quality management, it is of great importance to know the properties of the materials involved and their interconnections. Therefore, this chapter is devoted to the materials relevant for all the phases of nuclear energy generation listed in Chapter 2. The source of energy in nuclear power plants consists of ssionable isotopes used for producing nuclear fuel. The nuclear fuel is burnt in a reactor by means of a chain reaction. Besides ssile materials as the energy source, various materials are throughout the entire fuel cycle, including mining and producing safe fuel, maintaining and controlling the chain reaction, and nally the recycling and disposing of radioactive wastes. This means that the following groups of materials must be introduced: materials to produce nuclear energy; materials to manufacture nuclear fuel1 ; materials for controlling the nuclear chain reaction; materials for disposal and recycling of nuclear waste.
Before treating the materials that are used for above specied purposes in the following sections, some generalities concerning material properties of relevance to the subsequent sections must be discussed. First of all, the used terminology must include the following terms: property, attribute, characteristic, quantity, variable, parameter, value, quantication, and measurement; all of them referring to an object or process. An object is a static thing that is time-invariant, such as, for example, a fuel pellet. In contrast a process is something dynamic that exhibits changes in time. An object and a process have properties, where a property is the same as an attribute or a characteristic. For a specic object or process at hand, any considered attribute has a xed value which is an element of a certain set of different (possible) values. Note that the values are not necessarily represented by numbers. If the values of an attribute are represented by numbers, then the attribute may also be called variable and the set of numbers representing its possible values is called range of variability. The word parameter is used in the context of a given mathematical function; a parameter is denoted by a symbol that is part of the functions denition. A mathematical function is dened for one or more variables and has zero or more parameters. For example the exponential function y = eax with x is dened for a variable, Say X , with a range of variability2 and a parameter with value a. The word quantity is used simultaneously for an attribute, a characteristic, a variable or a parameter. The meaning of the word quantity is xed by the context. All the attributes of a given object or process have xed values, i.e., the values are determined, but may be unknown. If the attributes are described by variables the values are numbers and therefore also called numerical values.
1 Nuclear fuel here means not only the actual fuel pellet, but the whole fuel assembly and its components. 2 The symbol denotes the set of real numbers from minus innity to plus innity.
The procedure to describe an attribute by a variable or to express the values of an attribute by numbers is called quantication. Quantication represents the basic operation that makes the exact science and technology possible. Quantication means that each value of an attribute is uniquely coded by a real number. Quantication of an attribute is a necessary condition for describing and communicating a given situation in an unambiguous way. For instance, if the temperature of a body would not be quantied, it would be impossible to describe and communicate the temperature of a given object in an unambiguous way. One could only describe the temperature vaguely by, for example, hot, warm or cold. Once an attribute is quantied by a variable each of its possible values is represented uniquely by a number and a so-called unit. For example, the quantication of length is done by means of a standard unit of length (meter) and assigning the numerical value (number) 1 to it. The unit of length is 1 of selected to be the length of the path traveled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 299792458 a second. By means of this denition it becomes possible to code any value the attribute may adopt. The attribute temperature is similarly quantied by a standard unit Kelvin dened by the natural zero of temperature and its value at the triple point of water which is coded by the number 273.16.
The determination of the unknown numerical value of a variable representing an attribute is called measurement. Measurements are besides quantication the basis of any exact science. The science of measurement is called metrology and because of its crucial importance for the functioning of the markets and the states, there are national public institutions for metrology in probably all states. One of the most inuential of these public institution is the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which, as disclosed on its homepage, is a non-regulatory federal agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce. NISTs mission is to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life3 .
Quantication and measurement are basic operations in science, technology and a scientic analysis of the properties of material is possible only because the properties are quantied. This fact shows that without adequate quantication nuclear technology could not have been developed. However, the operation of nuclear power plants rests not only on technology, but also on management. This leads to the question about the quantication of the properties of relevant management issues. Because of its great importance the two topics quantication and measurement shall be briey discussed here in the framework of physical quantities. The problem and signicance of quantication was rst recognized in physics, where the rst attempt was made to develop a systematic quantication of properties which could be taken as a guide for similar projects in different areas.
4.1.1
The International Systems of Units
Quantication is the activity of describing a given scenario in mathematical terms, and it is the most fundamental task in science. Without an appropriate quantication, any subsequent development will be ambiguous and inconsistent and must be judged as being unscientic. Because of the crucial importance of signicance for the development of an exact science, there is in physics a standard for the quantication of the relevant attributes. This is the International System of Units that was established in 1960 by the 11th General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM = Confrence gnrale des poids et mesures). The system is abbreviated SI (from the French Le Systme International dunits) and is used throughout the world. Responsible for the development of the SI are the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM, Bureau International des Poids et Mesures), the International Committee for Weights and Measures (CIPM, Comit International des Poids et Mesures), and the CGPM. The BIPM, which is located in Svres, a suburb of Paris, France, has the task of ensuring worldwide unication of physical quantication and measurement. It operates under the exclusive supervision of the CIPM, which itself comes under the authority of the CGPM. The development of the SI rests upon a small number of so-called basic attributes. The corresponding standardized units are called base units since the quantication of all all other attributes are derived from
3 http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/general2.htm, October 2009.
them. The basic attributes used in the SI are mass, length (see above), time, amount of substance, electric current, thermodynamic temperature (see above), and luminous intensity. Figure 4.1 shows graphically how the twenty two SI derived units with special names and symbols are related to the seven SI base units. Besides those attributes with special names for the corresponding units, there are four attributes without special names.
SI BASE UNITS
Derived units without special names
SI DERIVED UNITS WITH SPECIAL NAMES AND SYMBOLS

Solid lines indicate multiplication, broken lines indicate division
kilogram
kg
MASS
m3 VOLUME
newton
(kgm/s2)
pascal
Pa
(N/m2)
gray
Gy
(J/kg)
sievert
Sv
(J/kg)
FORCE
meter
PRESSURE, STRESS
watt (J/s)
ABSORBED DOSE
becquerel (1/s)
DOSE EQUIVALENT
hertz (1/s)
m
LENGTH
m2 AREA m/s VELOCITY m/s2 ACCELERATION
joule
(Nm)
Bq
Hz
second
s
TIME
ENERGY, WORK, QUANTITY OF HEAT

katal (mol/s)
POWER, HEAT FLOW RATE

weber (Vs)
ACTIVITY
(OF A RADIONUCLIDE)
FREQUENCY
henry
kat
mole
Wb
MAGNETIC FLUX
(Wb/A)
tesla
(Wb/m2)
mol
CATALYTIC ACTIVITY
coulomb (As)
INDUCTANCE
MAGNETIC FLUX DENSITY
AMOUNT OF SUBSTANCE
ampere
volt
(W/A)
ELECTRIC CURRENT
ELECTRIC CHARGE
degree (K) Celsius C farad (C/V)
POTENTIAL, ELECTROMOTIVE FORCE

ohm
kelvin
F
CAPACITANCE
(V/A)
siemens
(1/W)
S
CONDUCTANCE
THERMODYNAMIC TEMPERATURE
CELSIUS TEMPERATURE t/C = T/K 273.15

lux
RESISTANCE
candela
cd
LUMINOUS INTENSITY
lx
(lm/m2)
lumen
lm
(cdsr)
steradian
2 2 sr (m /m = 1)
radian
rad
(m/m = 1)
ILLUMINANCE
LUMINOUS FLUX
SOLID ANGLE
PLANE ANGLE
Figure 4.1: Relationships of the SI derived units with special names and symbols and the SI base units4 .
The SI has solved the problem of quantication of physical attributes. However, it should be clear, that quality management is not primarily concerned with physical quantities, but with quantities like risk, safety, protability, etc. There are no international standards of quantication for these quantities and, therefore, a short account of quantication is given here that will be of use in the subsequent volumes of the handbook. To make things easier, examples from physics are used for the demonstration. The quantication process is done stepwise as stated below: 1. 2. 3. A symbol is assigned to the attribute, for example the capital letter Y . The set of values the attribute Y may adopt is identied. Any relations between the values are identied: to this end the following questions must be answered: (a) (b) (c) 4. Is there an ordering relation among the values? Do two values x a distance between them? Is there a natural zero among the values?
5.
6.
If all the questions are answered negatively, then numbers are assigned to each element of the set of values meeting only one requirement namely that no two or more values are represented by the same number. Of course, the numbers are selected in a way that working with them is as simple as possible. Example: There are different modications of Zircaloy. The modications are quantied by the numbers 1 to 4. If there is an ordering relation among the values, the assigned numbers must reect the order. Example: Often there are quality classes for products of the same type. The classes dene an order with respect to quality without specifying a quality distance. The numbers assigned to the classes must mirror the order. If any two values uniquely x a distance between them, then the assigned numbers must also reect the distance. Example: Most of the physical attributes fall into this category such as the attributes length, mass or thermodynamic temperature.
4 http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/SIdiagram.html, October 2009.
5. Manufacturing Techniques and Processes

5.1 Introduction to Manufacturing
This chapter is devoted to the most important nuclear fuel manufacturing techniques and processes being used today. Here a technique stands for a body of specialized processes. The presentation cannot be exhaustive because of the quick development of new techniques and the improvement of processes. It will therefore be focused on the basics which are necessary to understand the quality management activities dealt with in the subsequent volumes of the handbook. The continuous advancements of manufacturing techniques and the improvement of processes leads in many cases to a higher manufacturing precision and, thus, to less rework. Generally, there are several alternative processes or combinations of processes that can be used in fabrication. Besides purely technical aspects, the selection of processes should also take into account environmental issues, such as the disposal of lubricants, solvents and swarf. Furthermore, any risk potential must never be neglected. For example, the ignition of Zircaloy chips and turnings has not always been considered and led to injuries to the people involved. The ignition temperature of zirconium powder1 is between 80 C and 350 C depending on the surface to volume ratio of the zirconium powder/piece2 . Fuel assemblies and their components are produced by means of a number of established technical manufacturing techniques such as heat treatment, moulding, forming, etc., taking account of the parameters that are specic for the particular material. In fact, a correctly performed manufacturing process of a fuel assembly component generally results in good in-reactor performance. On the other hand, if this process is incorrectly performed, the component will most likely perform unsatisfactory in-reactor. The techniques used to manufacture nuclear fuel can be classied in six groups according to the German standard DIN 8580 (2003). The groups are dened according to the aims3 . In Table 5.1, these groups are listed together with the respective aims and some explaining comments.
Table 5.1: Classication of manufacturing methods. Manufacturing Techniques Primary Forming Dividing Joining Coating Modifying Shaping Material Properties Creation of an Modication of Local Assembly of Application Alter material initial shape a shape with separation individual of thin layers properties by e.g. from molten, controlled geometry of workpieces by e.g. heat treatment, gaseous or while retaining material and lling, galvanization hardening, formless its mass and saturation recrystallation solid state material cohesion of porous annealing workpieces
The heat treatment is particularly important for the long-term performance of the components, as it largely determines internal microscopic structure of the material. As a matter of fact, the heat treatment is vi1 Extracting by suction the zirconium chips accrued by insertion of the fuel rods into the fuel assembly grids has occasionally led to re. 2 Dressler and Rhle (1973). 3 Deutsches Institut fr Normung (DIN) (2003).
tally important for durability, for reliability and, thus, for controlling the costs. In contrast to most other techniques, the effects of heat treatment are often difcult to recognize. Some of the manufacturing processes used to put together a fuel assembly is listed in Table 5.2. The applications refer to the components of fuel assemblies (for details see the Chapter 9 on fuel assemblies).
Table 5.2: Machining techniques and respective fuel components. Manufacturing Process Fuel Assembly Component Heat Treatment Annealing Cladding Tubes, Guide Tubes, Sheets Sintering Fuel Pellets, Al2 O3 -Insulator Pellets Molding: Investment Casting Bottom Nozzle, Top Tie or Grid Plates Cold Pilgering Cladding Tubes, Guide Tubes Cold-Draw Tubes Multi-Rod-Straightening Cladding Tubes, Guide Tubes Cold Powder Pressing Fuel Pellets, Al2 O3 -Insulator Pellets Forming: Edge Bending Channel Deep Drawing Small Parts Stamping Grid Strips Dimple, Grid Springs Rolling Spacer and Channel Sheet Material Cutting: Electrochemical Machining (ECM) Anti-Debris Filter, Control Rod Spider Electrical Discharge Machining (EDM) Control Rod Spider, Tools Stamping Grid Straps Drilling Top and Bottom Nozzle, Nuts, Screws Milling Top and Bottom Nozzle, Nuts, Screws Grinding Fuel Pellets, Cladding Tubes Lasercutting Grid Strips Assembling: Resistance Welding (WPS) End Plugs/Fuel Rods Electron Beam Welding (EB) End Plugs/Fuel Rods, Top and Bottom Nozzle, Spacer Grids Laser Welding End Plugs/Fuel Rods, Spacer Grids, Channels Tungsten Inert Gas Welding (TIG) End Plugs/Fuel Rods, Seal Weld Resistance Spot Welding Spacer Grids/Guide Tubes Brazing Anti-Debris Filter Coating: Finishing Surfaces Cladding Tubes, Fuel Pellets, Small Parts Coating Surfaces Control Rods, Springs Lower Ends of Fuel Rods Rapid Prototyping Various Components
The following sections describe some of the above listed processes to illustrate their signicance for the quality of nuclear fuel and for demonstrating the different alternatives. A basic understanding of the manufacturing processes are a necessary condition for a successful quality management dealt with in the subsequent volumes of the handbook.
5.2
5.2.1
Heat Treatment
Introduction to Heat Treatment
The composition and cold-work preparation of material is of utmost importance for the mechanical and physical-metallurgical properties. However, without an appropriate heat treatment the specic adjustment of the material properties would not be possible. The heat treatment of the material results in a material microstructure, which determines the material properties and, thus, the operating performance of the respective component as illustrated by Figure 5.1.
Heat Treatment
Material Microstructure
Material Properties
Material/ Component Properties
Figure 5.1: Essential determination of the future performance of material/components by heat treatment.
Besides the material/component performance, the selection of the heat treatment process should also take into account possibilities for reducing energy consumption, for streamlining the processes, for reducing material distortion and, nally, for reducing the environmental impact. Heat treatments may consist of a controlled sequence of annealing, hardening, quenching and tempering. During heat treatment the material is thus exposed to varying temperatures that affect the kinetics of phase transformations and structural changes to obtain the desired mechanical, physical and chemical properties. In principle, any heat treatment means a stepwise heating-up to a required temperature, holding the temperature and a subsequent cooling as illustrated in Figure 5.2. Information about the required temperatures for heat treatments are obtained from the phase diagram of the respective material.
Warming Temperature Surface
Holding Warm through Fast Quenching
Cooling
Slow Quenching
Inside
Time
Figure 5.2: Schematic representation of the heat treatment process.
Heat treatments are carried out in furnaces, distinguishing between batch, semi-continuous and continuous ones4 . The furnace is operated either electrically or with gas. The atmosphere is another distinctive feature of heat treatment. For avoiding, for instance, oxidation the treatment is carried out in a protective atmosphere (e.g. Ar or He atmosphere) or in a vacuum. The required time for the warming process depends on various parameters, such as the material load in the furnace, the workpiece surface, the material composition, the component geometry and other factors related to the heat treatment. For example, the cladding tubes made of zirconium alloys are heat-treated in a vacuum to prevent the contamination of the surfaces. As a consequence, heat can be transferred only by thermal radiation and any shadow has to be avoided when loading the furnace as this could affect the temperature in the cladding material. The second stage of holding the material at a certain temperature starts only after the workpiece has been heated through its entire volume. The last stage, cooling or quenching (see Figure 5.3), is another parameter which may have a large impact on the material microstructure. The cooling process must be selected such that the required microstructure is obtained without causing component distortion or lack of integrity. The speed of quenching affects the result of the heat treatment. Cooling may be done with dry or humid air or an inert shielding gas. Moreover, liquids like water, oils or emulsions and uidized beds of ne aluminium oxide particles may be used. If cooling is carried out in a liquid medium, it typically starts with a steam lm formation, followed
4 Totten and Howes (1997).
6. Measurements and Inspections

6.1 Measurements as a Management Tool
Management of a company means to make decisions related to company and organizational goals, progress and quality at both the executive and project levels. Measurements provide objective information to enable appropriate decisions. To be more specic, measurements are helpful in the following four management areas: Measurements are an effective way to identify the status. Measurements enable a pro-active management by identifying potential problems early in the life cycle. Thus, a successful risk management can be implemented. Measurements allow to justify decisions and to verify the appropriateness of decisions by objective procedures. Measurements from similar projects allow to set realistic goals, schedules and budgets for projects.
A decision always refers to the future, aiming at impacting the future development to reach a certain positive result. During the entire nuclear fuel cycle, numerous decisions have to be made and each wrong decision might result in safety risks and nancial losses. All design decisions with respect to the fuel and the reactor, for example, aim at securing safety and economic success. In order to reduce the danger of poor technical and managerial decisions, implicit and explicit predictions of the performance of the reactor and its components during normal and accident conditions are made continuously. Consequently, every organization should develop and implement prediction procedures which are based on measurements. Safety and protability of nuclear power plants are both inuenced by numerous requirements with respect to: 1. 2. the nuclear fuel; the operating condition of the reactor.
One of the tasks of the management is to make sure that the various requirements are fullled. Many requirements are given by sets of numbers. Unfortunately, there are numerous ways used for representing a set of numbers which may lead to confusion. Therefore, sets of numbers are represented throughout this handbook by curly brackets used in either of two ways: the brackets enclose the explicitly given elements (numbers) of the set, for example, {1, 2, 3} is the set which contains the numbers 1, 2, and 3; the brackets enclose a generic element (number) and the set-dening conditions specied after the vertical line |, for example, {x 1 x 3} is again the set which contains the numbers 1,2, and 3.
Furthermore, the following notations for some special sets of numbers are used: = set of natural numbers: the number 1 and any number (such as 3, 12, 432) obtained by adding 1 to it one or more times; 0 = set of integers including zero; = set of integers: any of the natural numbers, the negatives of the natural numbers and zero; = set of rational numbers: any quotient of integers with non-zero denominator; = set of real numbers: any rational number and the irrational numbers1 such as 2 and .
1 An irrational number cannot be expressed as a fraction. Note that almost all real numbers are irrational.
6.1.1
Requirements
There are different expressions used for the requirements in nuclear technology and more generally in the industry. Sometimes the word criterion is used as, for example, in the General Design Criteria for Nuclear Power Plants2 issued by the US-NRC. Other terms used are specications, tolerances, standards or limits. Often the meaning of a requirement is not clear which may lead to confusion. In this handbook any restriction imposed on the nuclear fuel and reactor is called a requirement. There are general and specic requirements, qualitative and quantitative requirements, and requirements referring to a given object or system or to its future performance. For example, the following requirement taken from 10CFR50 (Appendix A) is used to illustrate a specic, qualitative requirement: General Design Criterion, GDC, 10 Reactor design. The reactor core and associated coolant, control, and protection systems shall be designed with appropriate margin to assure that specied acceptable fuel design limits are not exceeded during any condition of normal operation, including the effects of anticipated operational occurrences. This requirement is specic, because it refers to the reactor design and it is qualitative, as it is not expressed in numbers. In contrast, a quantitative requirement is always specied by a set of numbers. For example, the density requirement for a UO2 -pellet could be given by the following set of real numbers: density = {d 10.25 g/cm3 d 10.40 g/cm3 } (6.1)
The lower-case letter d symbolizes a generic value of the pellet density and the requirement is specied after the vertical line : the value of the density must be larger than or equal to 10.25 g/cm3 and smaller than or equal to 10.40 g/cm3 . The bounds of such a quantitative requirement are called either tolerance limits or specication limits. Another example of a quantitative requirement refers to the loss of coolant accident (LOCA)3 and is given in 46 of 10CFR50 (US-NRC): Maximum hydrogen generation. The calculated total amount of hydrogen generated from the chemical reaction of the cladding with water or steam shall not exceed 0.01 times the hypothetical amount that would be generated if all of the metal in the cladding cylinders surrounding the fuel, excluding the cladding surrounding the plenum volume, were to react. Thus, the hydrogen generation requirement hydro is given by the set: hydro = {h h 0.01h0 } (6.2)
where h0 is the hypothetical amount that would be generated if all of the metal in the cladding cylinders surrounding the fuel, excluding the cladding surrounding the plenum volume, were to react. There is a fundamental difference between the density requirement density and the hydrogen generation requirement hydro . The density requirement refers to a given pellet with xed value of the density while the hydrogen generation requirement refers to the future performance of a cladding tube during LOCA conditions. Whether or not the density specication is met by a given pellet, can be checked by measuring its density before it is lled into a fuel rod. Obviously, it is impossible to check whether the LOCA hydrogen generation requirement is met before the cladding is used and a LOCA has occurred since a performance requirement refers to the indeterminate future. Thus, for showing that a performance requirement, such as (6.2) is met, a calculated prediction of the total amount of hydrogen generated is used. To distinguish between requirements in view of the necessary control methods, the following terminology is used in this handbook. A characteristic of a product or process that refers to its given state is called a design characteristic, while a characteristic of an object or process that refers to its future performance is called performance characteristic. A specic requirement is called criterion. Example: The above given GDC10 requirement taken from the (US) General Design Criteria for Nuclear Power Plants is specic for the reactor design and therefore called criterion.
2 http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part050/part050-appa.html, October 2009. 3 For details about LOCA, see Section 11.1.7.1.
A quantitative requirement that refers to a design characteristic, i.e., to an attribute of a given product or system is called specication. It is given by a set denoted by . Example: The requirement for the pellet density refers to a given product and is given by a set of number such as (6.1) and it is therefore called a specication. A quantitative requirement that refers to a performance characteristic of a given product or process is called tolerance. It is given by a set denoted by . Example: The US-NRC hydrogen generation requirement for claddings refers to the future performance and is given by the set (6.2) that species those performance values which are tolerated.
Note that this terminology is not standard, but it seems to be justied to avoid the generally existing confusion. Moreover, the term specication is usually given in industrial practice in a way that enables both parties (producer and consumer) and/or an independent certier to measure the degree of conformance while a tolerance is often linked with the future behavior of a process subject to randomness. According to the terminology used here, a specication prescribes some manufacturing details of the object in order to guarantee an desirable performance. Whether a specication is met or not can be controlled by means of an appropriate measurement procedure. In contrast, a tolerance species the desired future performance with respect to the purpose of the object, but does not x manufacturing details. It can be controlled for given object/operational conditions by means of an appropriate prediction procedure.
6.1.2
Specication
A product that is conforming to the corresponding specications is said to have a good quality, while a product not meeting the specications is called nonconforming and often regarded to be of low quality or even defective. If the specications are selected correctly, an object that meets them will fulll its purpose with a high probability, while a nonconforming object will fulll its purpose only with a small probability. The probability refers to the future event that the object will fulll its purpose. A high probability means that the occurrence of the event may be anticipated, while a small probability means that one should not expect its occurrence. More than 300 years ago, the concept of probability was introduced by the Swiss theologian and mathematician Jakob Bernoulli as a property of future events. He explained this property of a future event as the degree of certitude that the event will occur. Note that the probability of a future event does neither demand that the event is recurrent nor that it is the result of belief or expert opinion. The probability is an objective property of an event just as the weight is an objective property of an object. In general, both the actual value of the probability of an event just as the actual value of the weight of an object are unknown. For assessing their values one can use an objective measurement procedure or a subjective expert opinion, where the latter should be avoided. Summa summarum, for a safe operation of nuclear reactors, the fuel and the reactor must meet a number of specications with respect to composition and design. For instance, there are specications for the composition of the cladding and pellet materials, for the geometric dimensions of the fuel pellets, and for the components of the reactor. The specications are given by certain sets of numbers, representing those values that are acceptable in view of the future performance. In order to verify that a specication is met, the actual value of the corresponding characteristic must be determined, using a measurement procedure based on an appropriate metering test and yielding a correct measurement result with sufciently high probability. For nding out whether or not a given characteristic meets a specication by determining its actual value, many different physical or chemical tests or processes are available which utilize relations between the quantity to be measured and other quantities which can be observed. For example, many of the nondestructive measurement methods, such as ultrasonic analysis, X -ray microscopy, or eddy current inspection, are based on the interactions of the energy used and the material defects to be determined. The defect as well as the circumjacent microstructure and stress conditions are of relevance and must be taken into account when modelling the interactions, as otherwise a meaningful interpretation of the observations becomes impossible. The relevant technology is advancing rather quickly, and each year a large number of enhanced tests based on newly detected relations is introduced. Therefore, one of the tasks of quality management is to make sure that out-dated tests are abandoned in due time and advanced ones introduced.
7. Nuclear Fuel Pellets

7.1 Nuclear Fuel
The energy in the nuclear fuel is produced by ssion of uranium and plutonium and is released in form of heat. The complete ssion of one kilogram of uranium-235 produces as much energy as the combustion of 2400 tons of coal1 . From an economical point of view, fuel is particularly important because it is consumable; any decrease in consumption would reduce the amount of consumed fuel and, hence, also the amount of spent fuel that has to be disposed of at high cost. The higher the burn-up of spent fuel the smaller the amount of irradiated material for the same quantity of produced energy. The level of burn-up plays an important role in assessing the situation from a quality managerial point of view as the objective of any commercial nuclear power plant is to produce energy by burning fuel. This makes it all the more surprising that there is no standard quantication for burn-up. Three units are used for quantifying burn-up: 1. 2. 3. The rst one is called ssion density (F ) and species the number of ssions within a cm3 of fuel. The second one expresses the fraction of burn-up as the percentage of heavy metal atoms that have ssioned (%FIMA = ssions per initial metal atom) that sometimes is referred to as fractional burn-up. The third one state the power generated per metric ton of fuel (MW d /t = mega watt day per tonne)2 . It is also called specic burn-up.
It is argued that for different applications different burn-up units are needed. For calculating the ssion gas release or ssion product swelling the ssion density appears to be appropriate, while the %FIMA (= percent ssion per initial metal atom3 ) is suitable for performing post-irradiated examinations (PIE). Finally, the specic burn-up is used whenever the energy production shall be addressed. Clearly, each of the three ways (1. to 3. above) to calculate burn-up is fully justied and, evidently, closely related to each other. But they are not at all identical. The number of ssions per cm3 is not constant, but varies in time and location in the fuel and the same holds true for %FIMA and the power generated per metric ton of fuel. Actually, the relations between the tree ways (1. to 3. above) are so far not analyzed or represented quantitatively by also taking into account the corresponding uncertainties. Instead, often it is assumed that the variables 1. to 3. above are proportional to each other4 by assuming the following representations5 : 1. Assuming that the involved variables of the ssion density F are neither time-dependent nor subjected to random, for a specic time period is usually represented by the following deterministic relationship:
1 Bailly et al. (1999), p. 3. 2 Frost (1982), p. 76. 3 The heavy metal atoms generally refer to uranium, plutonium and thorium, but do not include oxide and structural
material of fuel rods and assemblies. When only one ssile material is present as, for example, in enriched uranium, the fractional burn-up is often named ssion per initial ssile atom (FIFA). 4 For example: Y. Nakahara et al., 2002, p. 120: Furthermore, the value of the burn-up degree (GWd/t) was determined by multiplying the value of the burn-up rate (%FIMA= Fissions per Initial Metal Atom in percent) by 9.6. The error of burn-up by this method is 3% or less. 5 Olander (1976), p. 114,115.
number of ssions F = qf Nf cm3 where 2.
] (7.1)
q = enrichment, or the ratio of ssile atoms to total heavy metal atoms (U and Pu); f = effective ssion cross section; N f total number of heavy metal atoms per unit volume as function of time t ; = neutron ux.
The deterministic approach leads to the following expression for the fractional burn-up (%FIMA): ] [ F number of ssions = 0 (7.2) initial number of heavy metal atoms Nf with N0 f = initial number of heavy metal atoms cm3 (7.3)
The conversion of a value of the ssion density F to the corresponding %Fima-value shall be illustrated by an example. Consider uranium oxide UO2 with a theoretical density given by g 3 UO2 = 10.96 cm 3 . Then the number of uranium atoms NU in one cm of UO2 is obtained as follows: NU = where Nav denotes Avogadros number with Nav = 6.022 1023 mole1 and MUO2 is the molecular weight of uranium oxide with an enrichment of 4%. It is: MUO2 =
g g g 0.96 238 mole + 0.04 235 mole + 2 16 mole g 23 atoms 10.96 cm 3 6.022 10 mole
UO2 Nav MUO2
(7.4)
(7.5)
= 0.2445 1023 From this the %FIMA-value is obtained: = 3.

atoms cm3 0.2445 1023 atoms cm3
(7.6)
1020
102 % = 0.409 %
(7.7)
Using the above outlined deterministic approach, the number of megawatt days of thermal energy released by fuel containing one tonne of heavy metal atoms G is obtained as6 : [ G = 95000 MW d tonne ] (7.8)
where the factor 950000 is based on the assumptions that 200 MeV of total energy is released by a d 6 MW d . single ssion yielding the thermal energy of 0.95 MW gr or 0.95 10 t From the above expressions it is clear that F is not identical to , since the variable N 0 f is not a constant but varies between different volume units. The same holds true for G in relation to . None of the above relationship take into consideration the inherent variability caused by randomness. Actually, the energy yield is subjected to randomness and should therefore be described by a random variable in order to reect the inherent variability. Because the three ways (1. to 3. above) of calculating burn-up involve random variables that have a probability distribution, but not a xed value, any measurement of the ssion density or the %FIMA represents a so far not considered problem. There are essentially two methods applied for nevertheless determining a value for the %FIMA, a non-destructive and a destructive method:
6 Olander (1976), p. 115.
The non-destructive methods are based on the relationship between the -ray intensity of a suitable selected ssion product isotope and the ssion density, F . The -ray intensity is determined, for example, by -scanning, and subsequently a value for the ssion density is calculated. The destructive method uses the fact that the concentration of heavy element isotopes is changed by neutron capture and ssion. A sample of dissolved fuel is used to determine by means of mass spectrometry: the concentration of heavy element isotopes, or the concentration of a suitable ssion product isotope.
Subsequently, the experimentally obtained values are used to calculate a %FIMA-value. As stated in Section 1.2, nuclear fuel quality management is concerned with the following three main tasks: 1. Firstly, ensurance that there are no noteworthy incidents involving fuel. This task includes, of course, that all the specications and requirements with respect to fuel, reactor and operational conditions are met. Secondly, ensurance of the on-time fuel supply to the reactor. Thirdly, arrangement of a safe storage or disposal of nuclear wastes.
2. 3.
These tasks are closely related to one another. In this chapter, the two former tasks are treated in detail. The rst task comprises the supply of uranium/plutonium, while the second task includes the production of nuclear pellets and fuel assemblies and the operation of the fuel in the reactor in an efcient and safe way. Of great importance is the production of fuel cladding tubes which constitute the primary barrier towards the leakage of radioactive ssion products7 . Nuclear fuel is provided as fuel assemblies for the use in a nuclear reactor. The following chapters introduce a consistent fuel-related terminology and give a comprehensive overview on fuel assemblies. The manufacturing of nuclear pellets consists of ve distinct steps: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. extraction of natural triuranium octaoxide (U3 O8 ) (yellow cake); conversion to uranium hexauoride (UF6 ); enrichment of U-235; conversion to uranium dioxide (UO2 ); manufacturing of fuel pellets.
In the following sections these ve steps are described in some detail.
7.2
Extraction of Triuranium Octaoxide U3 O8
In 2006, about 60% of the uranium demand for nuclear reactors8 used for the production of nuclear fuel was obtained by mining uranium ore. In addition, there are so-called secondary sources (uranium extracted from already mined materials or from government or commercial inventories), down-blended highly enriched uranium (HEU) from dismantling of nuclear warheads, reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel and re-enrichment of depleted uranium tails. Although, there were 20 countries in 2006 actively producing uranium9 , only eight of them (Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan, Niger, Russian Federation, Namibia, Uzbekistan and USA) accounted for about 93% of the world production. In Table 7.1 the uranium production from mines is given for 200810 .
7 Besides the fuel cladding there are two (BWR) and three (PWR) more barriers to prevent the release of ssion products: the crystal lattice of the ceramic fuel pellets, the primary circuit (only PWR), which is designed to bear high pressure, and the high integrity steel shell of the reactor containment. 8 OECD/NEA, IAEA (2008), p. 11. 9 OECD/NEA, IAEA (2008), p. 37. 10 http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf23.html, December 2009.
8. Production of Zircaloy Components

8.1 Preliminary Remarks
Nowadays cladding tubes are made almost exclusively of zirconium alloys that can be formed, machined, and welded using standard machines and techniques. Zirconium just as titanium and hafnium are reactive metals implying that the following problems or difculties may occur1 : contamination of welds by air; spring back and formation of cracks in bending; galling tendencies; attempts to weld zirconium to other metals; grinding zirconium with wheels previously used for ferrous alloys.
Handling and machining of zirconium requires utmost care as machine chips might ignite and burn at extremely high temperatures. Accumulated chips or other nely divided zirconium material must be avoided. A started re cannot be distinguished by water but dry sand or sodium chloride should be used. As described in Section 4.4.1 zirconium is found in grains concentrated in large sand deposits. The sands are called zircon sand and the manufacturing procedure for cladding tubes can be subdivided starting with the zircon sand into four steps: 1. 2. 3. 4. conversion of sand into sponge; processing of sponge into ingot; processing into semi-nished products; manufacturing into cladding tubes or at products (for grid straps and BWR fuel channels).
In the following sections the four steps are described in some detail. In fact, each of the four steps is crucial for the performance of the fuel rods in the reactor. Moreover, the applied methods are subject to continuous advancement that pose a great challenge to successful quality management.
8.2
Conversion of Zircon Sand to Zirconium Sponge
The conversion of zircon sand into zirconium sponge takes place by chlorination, extraction, calcination and reduction. At the end of the reduction, the metallic zirconium becomes available as sponge. With the help of a press, the sponge is broken into small pieces by cleaving and shearing. Zircon sand generally contains up to 3% hafnium that because of its high thermal neutron cross section must be removed when producing the sponge in order to obtain reactor grade zirconium, which requires not more than 100 ppm hafnium content2 . The separation process of zirconium and hafnium that have very similar properties is extremely difcult and expensive and many different procedures have been proposed since van Arkel and de Boer had introduced their rst industrial process for the commercial production of pure metallic zirconium. Among the many methods proposed are the following3 :
1 Schemel (1977), p. 42. 2 Moulin et al. (1984), p. 37. 3 Vinarov (1967), p. 522.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
fractional crystallisation; fractional precipitation; fractional distillation; selective dechlorination of zirconium tetrachloride; selective reduction of the tetrachlorides by metals; electrolysis of melts; adsorption and ion exchange; selective extraction by solvents fractional.
The large number of proposed methods indicate that the question of the most efcient method for producing reactor garde zirconium has been so far not answered in a conclusive way. Commercially, the solvent extraction process is most commonly practised for separating these elements in the Kroll process shown in Figure 8.1.
Zircon (SiO2, ZrO2, HfO2) Carbon SiCl4
ZrCl4 with Hafnium
Carbon-Chlorination
Magnesium
Reduction by the Kroll Process Vacuum Distillation Mg
Chlorine
Sublimation
Milling HfCl4 Distallation Chlorine Extraction Separation Zr/Hf

ZrCl4 without Hf ZrCl4 pure, compact
Blending
Control
Zirconium Sponge
Figure 8.1: Flow chart for the manufacturing of zirconium sponge4 .
The solvent extraction process shown in Figure 8.1 consists of the following steps: At rst, the zirconium sand is mixed with carbon and nely milled resulting in a zirconium-carbon powder that is continuously fed from above into a chlorinator. From below chlorine gas ows into the chlorinator and gets into contact with the zirconium-carbon powder. Chlorination takes place. The resulting crude zirconium-chloride which contains hafnium passes through the condensers and is collected while other parts such as silicon tetrachloride are separated. In the further course of the process, the zirconium-hafnium chloride is conducted through an extraction column as well as a distillation column. As a result of this, the hafnium with its very large neutron absorption cross-section is separated from the zirconium. The remaining zirconium solution is precipitated as zirconium sulphate. The sulphate is mixed with ammonia for the conversion to zirconium hydroxide. The water is boiled out by heating and thereby giving zirconium oxide. The puried zirconium monoxide is mixed with carbon to produce (hafnium free) zirconium-tetrachloride. The zirconium tetrachloride is reduced by magnesium in the Kroll process and yields a zirconiumsponge cake as shown in Figure 8.2.
However, the Kroll process has some drawbacks: it is a complicated process and involves high cost, high energy consumption and pollution by toxic chlorine gas5 .
4 By courtesy of AREVA NP. 5 Li et al. (2007).
Figure 8.2: Zirconium-sponge cake6 .
Besides the above described process, many other processes are developed and proposed. As already described, high purity zirconium can be obtained by the van-Arkel-de-Boer process which involves the formation of the metal iodides at moderate temperature and their subsequent decomposition at high temperature on an electrically heated lament to yield pure metallic zirconium. This process is considerably more expensive than either the Kroll process or the electrolytic separation that is briey mentioned below. The JSC Chepetsky Mechanical Plant at Glazov (Udmurt Republic) in the Russian Federation produces all the zirconium used in VVER fuel elements. The plant is quite unique. In May 1957, it started to build a workshop for metal zirconium production and two years later the rst zirconium alloy ingots were produced. In contrast to the other production sites of nuclear grade zirconium, the plant does neither use the Kroll process nor the van-Arkel-de-Boer process, but an electrolytic process. The chemical content of zirconium manufactured by the electrolytic process has lower impurity concentrations compared to that of zirconium manufactured by the Kroll process but higher than that produced by the van-Arkel-de-Boer process. Currently, the assumption is pursued that zirconium sponge produced with the Kroll process exhibits a better LOCA oxidation resistance that produced electrolytically. The separation of hafnium from zirconium by molten salt electrolysis as done in the Chepetsky Plant consists of the following steps. Zirconium tetrachloride with ordinary hafnium tetrachloride content is dissolved in a molten salt and the zirconium tetrachloride is electrolytically reduced to zirconium trichloride with lower hafnium content at a cathode while the hafnium tetrachloride remains. Next, the cathode on which the zirconium trichloride is formed is used as an anode. The electrolytic reduction of zirconium tetrachloride at another cathode in the molten salt is carried out and at the same time, the zirconium trichloride formed on the anode is oxidized to zirconium tetrachloride with a low hafnium content which is separated by evaporation. Once zirconium and hafnium are separated, zirconium is used for a number of fuel rod components such as the cladding tubes, while hafnium is used for the cruciform BWR control rods.
8.3
Manufacturing of Zirconium Ingots
Small pieces of zirconium sponge together with a certain fraction of recycled zirconium and the required alloying elements serve as the base for producing zirconium ingots (see Figure 8.3).
6 By courtesy of AREVA NP.
9. The Fuel Assembly

9.1 Introduction to Fuel Assemblies
The fuel assemblies that generate heat in the reactors consist of top and bottom nozzle1 , eight to ten spacer grids (depending on the reactor power) holding Zircaloy cladding tubes, which are loaded with fuel pellets. BWR fuel assemblies2 also include ow channels in the form of square, zirconium-based tubed around their periphery and within the assemblies, in the design of the respective supplier. Fuel assemblies are sometimes classied according to the type of fuel material and the type of burnable absorber used in the pellets. There are assemblies with U-235 as the starting ssile material in the fuel (U-fuel assemblies), assemblies with plutonium as U/Pu mixed oxide fuel (MOX = Mixed Oxide Fuel), assemblies with reprocessed uranium as fuel (RepU = Reprocessed Uranium), assemblies with enriched reprocessed uranium (ERU), with highly enriched uranium3 (HEU) and with blended low enriched uranium4 (BLEU). Moreover, there are assemblies with a number of selected fuel rods containing burnable poisons (e.g. gadolinium or erbium) for the compensation of the excess reactivity in the case of freshly loaded fuel. A fuel assembly must meet the following safety criteria5 : control of core reactivity and ability to achieve safe core shutdown in all circumstances; residual heat removal through the preservation of a coolable geometry; containment of radioactive materials, in particular ssion products, inside the containment barriers where the crystal lattice of the fuel pellets and the enveloping cladding tube of the fuel rods constitute the rst two barriers.
Every fuel-related incident may cause large nancial losses. From an economic point of view, the wellfunctioning of the fuel assemblies is therefore of highest importance and the fuel assemblies constitute the focus of attention for quality management. In the following sections, the fuel assemblies used in PWR and BWR reactors are described, as they are familiar to most readers and embody many features of the other signicant types of water reactor fuel6 . Western style fuel assemblies for BWR and PWR reactors with square lattices together with a Russian type VVER fuel assembly are displayed in Figure 9.1
1 At the fuel assembly upper part there are mid span mixing grids (MSMG), also called intermediate ow mixing grids (IFMG), as an option for PWR to provide additional DNB (departure from nucleate boiling) margins or to minimize the impact on assembly pressure drop. 2 Note that BWR fuel assemblies are also called bundles. 3 HEU is uranium that has been enriched 20 w/o U-235 or greater. 4 BLEU is obtained by down-blending HEU that does not meet commercial grade criteria from about 60 w/o U-235 to less than 5 w/o U-235. 5 UK-EPR, Fundamental Safety Overview, Sub-Chapter D.2 Fuel Design, p 1., http://www.epr-reactor.co.uk/ssmod/
liblocal/docs/V3/Volume%202%20-%20Design%20and%20Safety/2.D%20-%20Reactor%20and%20Core/2.D.2%20-%20Fuel% 20Design%20-%20v2.pdf, May 2009.

6 Note that the CANDU facility of Ontario Hydro in Canada is either the largest or is still one of the largest nuclear installations in the world. Similarly, the VVER reactor is the dominant type of reactor in Russia and eastern Europe. VVERs are becoming increasingly common in other Asian countries as well.
Assembly Cap Guide Channels
Spacer Grids
Fuel Rods Tail Piece
Figure 9.1: Left: BWR fuel assembly; center: PWR fuel assembly7 ; right: VVER fuel assembly.
The design of a fuel assembly and, hence, also the design of its components depend on the type of nuclear reactor and on the manufacturer. Here, only the common features of the components are mentioned, while the many small design differences between different brands and reactor types are neglected. For a better understanding of the subsequently given list of components, some principle design restrictions for PWR and BWR fuel assemblies shall be mentioned briey.
9.1.1

PWR Fuel Assemblies
The dimensions of a PWR fuel assembly are determined by the positions of the control rod drives and guide tubes (guide thimbles); the compatibility of the assembly with the reactor pressure vessel and its fuel support structure.
Control rods used in conjunction with neutron absorbing materials (chemical shims) added to the coolant enable the reactor power to be controlled. The control rods are inserted into the guide tubes of the fuel assembly and are actuated by drives located in the head of the reactor pressure vessel. Therefore, the positions of the guide tubes in the assembly are particularly important design characteristics of a PWR fuel assembly. The fuel rods in an assembly are arranged in a square or in a hexagonal lattice. The distance between the fuel rods in a PWR fuel assembly is determined by the proportion of the moderator and the fuel and by thermal hydraulic factors. Each PWR assembly can be divided into the fuel rods with the pellets and the structure (skeleton) see Figure 9.2.
PWR Fuel Assembly
Fuel Rods
Structure
Figure 9.2: The two parts of a PWR fuel assembly.
7 By courtesy of Westinghouse Electric Sweden.
9.1.2
BWR Fuel Assemblies
In contrast to PWR assemblies, the distance between the fuel rods in a BWR assembly is not xed. The external dimension of a BWR fuel assembly is xed by cruciform-shaped control blades that reside between assemblies, the fuel support structure and the reactor vessel. It follows that the number of fuel rods within two BWR fuel assemblies with equal external dimension may be different. Currently, 10 10 square congurations are popular. Each BWR fuel assembly can be divided into fuel rods with the pellets, the structural elements with tie plates and spacers also including water rods, water boxes or other ow passages within the external ow channel to get more coolant to the upper regions of the bundle, where steam/water ratios are typically in the range of 70% and the ow channel surrounding the other parts see Figure 9.3.
BWR Fuel Assembly
Fuel Rods
Structure
Channel
Figure 9.3: The three parts of a BWR fuel assembly.
The channel is an open-ended box made of, for example, Zircaloy or another zirconium-based alloy. It surrounds the structure with the fuel rods and directs the core coolant ow through the structure and also serves to guide the movable control rods.
9.1.3
Components of Fuel Assemblies

Hold Down Spring Top Nozzle
Before some of the components of the fuel assemblies are described in more detail, the functions of the components are outlined. In Figure 9.4, the structure of a fuel assembly and its main components are schematically represented, while in the Tables 9.1 and 9.2, the components of PWR and BWR fuel assemblies are listed, introducing the terminology that is used throughout this handbook.
Fuel Rod Spacer Grid
Bottom Nozzle
Figure 9.4: Schematic representation of a fuel assembly.
Table 9.1: The components of PWR and BWR fuel rods. PWR Fuel Rod Top End Plug Plenum Spring Cladding Tube Fuel Pellet Insulation Pellet Supporting Tube8 Bottom End Plug
BWR Fuel Rod Top End Plug Plenum Spring Cladding Tube Fuel Pellet Insulation Pellet Bottom End Plug
8 The PWR-line of German Siemens-KWU has supporting tubes, while the PWR-line of Westinghouse PWR has none.
Fuel Assembly Length
Guide Tube Fuel Rod Length Active Length
10. Front End Inspections

This chapter deals with inspections of physical and technical systems. In this handbook such inspections are distinguished from audits performed for the certication of a quality management system, e.g. according to ISO 9001. Although there is no clear differentiation in the relevant literature, the term audits shall not be used for a technical examination here. Audits are discussed in a later volume of this handbook. Front end inspections are performed during the fabrication of nuclear fuel before it is transpoted to the reactor. Any action that aims at determining a given state in order to compare it with specications or requirements is called inspection here. There are four different types of inspections: inspections of material by means of chemical-physical procedures; inspections of products by means of mechanical tests; inspections of lots or batches by means of sampling plans; inspections of processes by means of stochastic measurement procedures.
These four types of inspections are used to check whether certain specications with respect to material requirements or performances are met. The inspections are often performed on samples taken from the material or the product. The word sample is used with different meanings. The word sample might be used with one of the following interpretations: a small part of an object such as a metallographic specimen; an entire product intended to be characteristic of a whole lot of products, e.g., one zirconium ingot drawn from a lot of ingots; n copies (X1 , . . . , Xn ) of a random variable X , where X represents, for instance, the process of randomly drawing a pellet out of a lot of pellets, and the sample consists of n such random drawings.
The inspection of a sample often follows certain standards issued in particular by the American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM). Besides the ASTM standards there are national standards issued, for example, by the German standardization organization Deutsches Institut fr Normung (DIN) or the British Standards Institution (BSI). Unfortunately, the standards do not always specify clearly enough the important steps of taking the sample, so the inspection results are therefore not always comparable1 . Furthermore, the analytical methods evolve rather rapidly as new equipment becomes available. Generally, any new method is acceptable if it is demonstrated that it meets some satisfactory standard2 with respect to accuracy and correctness. The front end inspections are performed for different reasons: the manufacturer performs the inspection within the quality assurance program; the inspections are performed on behalf of the buyer, i.e., the operator of a reactor; the inspections are performed because of the product liability law; the inspections are performed because of regulatory requirements.
The inspections aim at asserting that the material, the product or the process meet the requirements. If this cannot be conrmed, some well dened measures have to be taken. The inspections are part of a so-called manufacturing and examination sequence plan (MESP) that is often not exclusively based on ofcial ISO standards, but includes also in-house standards of the manufacturer that may also be integral part of the supply agreement.
1 K. Baur, 2002, p. 348. 2 Sandvik, 1989, p. 45.
10.1
Manufacturing and Examination Sequence Plan
During the inspections, certain characteristics of a produced item are compared with the relevant manufacturing guidelines given, for example, by drawings. The comparison consists of determining whether the actual value of a characteristic meets certain specications. A specication is given by a set of admissible values of the corresponding characteristic (see Section 6.1.2). The characteristics may refer to geometrical (distances and angles), structural (positions), physical (material properties), chemical (composition) or probabilistic properties (process and lot properties). The determination of the actual value follows clearly dened rules stated in an inspection plan as part of a Manufacturing and Examination Sequence Plan (MESP). The MESP is a list of the numbered consecutive operation steps specifying the manufacturing activities and the corresponding inspections. The plan includes the scope of the inspections and by whom the inspections have to be executed by e.g. the production department, the quality assurance department or as surveillance by an independent third party. An inspection plan must include instructions about the following points: What characteristics shall be tested? Which test shall be used? How is the specimen or the statistical sample to be examined dened? How shall the inspection result be stated? When shall the inspection be performed? Who shall perform the inspection? Where shall the inspection be performed? How shall the inspection result be recorded?
By coordinating the manufacturing and the control activities, the MESP ensures that the inspections are performed in due time and with reasonable expenses during the manufacturing sequence. The inspection may refer to a specimen, a single item, to a batch of similar items or to a complex system. Additionally, the MESP can include reference documents describing in detail the inspection procedure. An inspection plan for performing a measurement could be arranged as follows: name of the item (e.g. MOX fuel pellet); name of the attribute (e.g. diameter); nominal value (e.g. d = 12.26 mm); tolerance (e.g. 0.15 mm); type of inspection (e.g. measurement); inspection device (e.g. laser scan micrometer).
During manufacturing of nuclear fuel, a large number of inspections are made to ensure a sufciently good quality of the fuel on the one hand, and to give evidence to the customer and the regulator that the required specications are met on the other hand. For illustration, a small part of a MESP for a the guide tube with end tting is displayed in Table 10.1. The rst row species the operation. The second column states the (manufacturing/inspection) method to be applied and the third column species the extent or scope of application. Finally it must be stated who, in case of an inspection, performs it: P = production department, Q = quality department, U = independent third party.
Table 10.1: Part of the Manufacturing and Examination Sequence Plan for the manufacturing of a guide tube with end tting. Guide Tube With End Fitting Manufac./Insp. Manufac./Insp. Scope Exec. by characteristic method P Q U Welding of the guide tubes reference document: document label 4.1 Identity of the visual 100% X individual parts 4.2 Cleanliness of visual 100% X the parts 4.3 Welding of the TIG 100% guide tubes welding
10.2
Documentation
The inspections performed during nuclear fuel manufacturing cover the complete production process. Some of them are performed automatically, however, most of them manually. As to the documentation, there are no strict regulations, and consequently each manufacturer follows the rules of the implemented quality assurance strategy. In Germany the regulations with respect to the documentation of inspection results are given in the standard KTA 1404 prepared by the Kerntechnische Ausschuss (Nuclear Safety Standards Commission)3 . These regulations denes which (product) specications must be inspected as well as the type of the test certicate according to the European standard EN 102044 to be used for the documentation. There are several types of test certicates: Type 2.1, declaration of compliance with the order. The declaration is issued by the producer and states the agreement with the order but does not give test results. Type 2.2, test report. The report is also issued by the producer and contains mechanical test reports based on non-specic inspection results, i.e., the values do not refer to the product at hand, but to some similar product produced, for example, by the same process5 . Type 3.1, inspection certicate. Same as Type 2.2, but based on specic inspection results; the certicate is issued and signed by the producers representative, who must be independent of the manufacturing department 6 . Type 3.2, inspection certicate: Same as Type 3.1, but the certicate is issued and signed by both the producers representative and an independent inspector appointed either by the customer or designated by ofcial regulations.
The content of an inspection certicate is specied by stating the minimum required data together with the languages in which the certicate is issued. Often the certicates are issued in the national language and in English. The minimum requirements depend on the component and may include the following information: batch size; melting number; specimen number; production period; serial number of the MESP; chemical analysis; mechanical properties;
3 KTA 1404, Dokumentation beim Bau und Betrieb von Kernkraftwerken, Fassung 6/01. 4 DIN EN 10204:2004, Metallic products Types of inspection documents, January 2005. 5 For example, the impurities Cl and P are not checked for each zirconium ingot, but only for a sample taken from the abbual production. 6 For example, the alloying elements are controlled for each zirconium ingot.
11. Fuel and Core Design Criteria

11.1 The Design Process
The design process for nuclear fuel and nuclear reactor are of essential importance for safety and profitability. In the following sections, the present state of the fuel and reactor design process is outlined. It appears that the process is in a transition phase and, therefore, should be of high interest for the fuel quality management. The ongoing changes refer to one of the main factors that has to be considered in the design process, namely uncertainty.
11.1.1
Design Principles
Before a product or a system is designed1 , the involved technical processes, apparatus arrangements, and materials (selection, interactions and ows) have to be clearly dened, as they essentially determine the design requirements that should be formulated as product or system specications. The main principle for designing a process or a technical product is the following: machines, apparatuses, cars and buildings must be efciently developed such that the process or product will function satisfactory in its environment for the anticipated duration of time. A better knowledge of the future operational environment, the material properties and the impact of environment on the properties will reduce the uncertainty about how the process/product will behave and consequently allow a more efcient design. The design of fuel assemblies is based on vast operating experience that goes back to the rst generation of reactors, such as the Shippingport reactor in the USA. This is also the reason why many requirements and rules are derived from the U.S. regulations of the 1950s and 1960s. The design of nuclear fuel assemblies must take into account neutron physics, thermohydraulic and mechanical performance (which is partially related to material properties). The aim of the design of a fuel assembly is to guarantee its integrity during the entire life time2 , i.e.: 1. 2. 3. during handling/transport from the fuel vendor to the utility; during operation in normal and accident conditions; during the transport to and from wet/dry interim storage as well as during the wet/dry nal storage.
One of the most important tasks of nuclear fuel quality management is to prevent design errors (i.e., a design that will not meet the anticipated performance of the process/product) by appropriate measures. The design problems refer to three areas: Mechanical performance: The reliable mechanical performance of the fuel assembly and its components is affected by the stresses, dimensional changes, hydriding, and the effects of corrosion they are exposed to, superimposed by the effects of irradiation on the material properties and on the coolant condition. The properties of the used materials and the applied manufacturing methods have to be considered. The materials are selected based upon mechanical properties, neutron absorption tendencies during normal reactor operation, melting temperatures during accident conditions, ease of manufacturing and environmental interactions such as corrosion and wear. The material properties are essential for selecting
1 In engineering, designing technical objects means to invent, calculate, construct, and select an appropriate arrangement to ensure that the objects performance or quality will meet the expectations. 2 Due to irradiation, the fuel assemblies and fuel rods suer from deformations and changes of the material properties, e.g. by corrosion, where the latter depend heavily on the processing and the previous history of operation.
the performance tolerances for the involved characteristics. The tolerances determine the specications that have to be met for ensuring a safe and efcient operation of the power plant. Thermohydraulics: Thermohydraulics, i.e. the science of heat and mass transfer, is the most important aspect for the design of the reactor core and the fuel assemblies to enable electrical power generation. The geometric dimensions of the reactor core3 is mainly determined by thermohydraulics. The generated heat must be discharged and, therefore, the distribution of the heat in the core is important. The heat distribution is determined to a large extent by the neutron ux density. Because of the reactor core design, the axial and radial neutron ux density proles have the approximate form of a cosine function. For a certain reactor thermal capacity the geometric dimensions of the fuel rods must meet certain requirements. Reactor physics: Reactor physics mainly refers to two areas. Firstly to the nuclear processes that occur in the reactor, and secondly to the theory of neutron migration and multiplication4 . The aim is to determine the required enrichment of the ssile material so that the desired burn-up is obtained during the specied total irradiation time before discharge. In-core fuel management deals with these two areas. The design of a power plant is completed as soon as the construction is nished and the power plant has been commissioned. A design discussion after the startup of the power plant may occur when certain recalculations may become necessary due to new technical insights that often result from economic incentives (e.g. higher burn-up, capacity increase, etc.), new experiences (e.g. by accidents, fuel rod failures, etc.), or continuous improvements (e.g. manufacturing methods, materials, etc.). For an efcient and safe operation of nuclear power plants, nuclear fuel performance is of utmost importance. Fuel should be inexpensive, reliable, robust, capable to operate to high burn-ups, and possible to run in long fuel cycles at high thermal heat uxes. Adequate fuel performance can only be achieved, if the impact of the reactor environment (neutron ux/uence, thermohydraulic conditions and water coolant chemistry) on the fuel behavior (e.g. creep, irradiation growth, ssion gas release, pellet-cladding interaction, fuel failure mechanisms, etc.) has been adequately taken into account. After the operating conditions have been analyzed and modelled, the design calculations are made in order to formulate the design requirements. Subsequently, it must be shown that the requirements are actually met under normal and abnormal (transient and accident) operating conditions. The design process is illustrated in Figure 11.1.
System Inherent Conditions
Reactor Core
Neutron Physics
Thermohydraulics
Materials
Coolant Conditions
Design Calculations
Design Requirements
Normal Operation Verification
Abnormal Operation
Figure 11.1: Schematic representation of the fuel design task.
The plant is operating normally if it stays in a predened stable state for an extended period of time that is only interrupted by brief controlled maneuvers for transition into another stable state. The Full Power Steady State is the most common and most preferred operating state. The design requirements must cover
3 Tong and Weisman (1979), pp. 340341. 4 Weinberg and Wigner (1958), p. 1.
all the failure mechanisms of the different normal and abnormal operation states of the reactor, which are listed in the next section.
11.1.2
Failure Mechanisms of Fuel Systems
In general the fuel vendor must provide design requirements for the failure mechanisms of the fuel systems5 that actually have occurred in commercial reactors as well as for hypothetical failure mechanisms. The requirements must refer to the following characteristics which have been identied by the regulatory authorities: Fuel failure by: stress, strain or loads for steady state and transients; fatigue; fretting; oxidation, hydriding, CRUD deposition; dimensional changes, fuel rod axial growth; fuel rod internal pressure; fuel centreline temperature; end plug weld integrity; hydraulic loads; loss of control rod reactivity. internal hydriding; cladding collapse; cladding temperature; departure from nucleate boiling; pellet temperature; pellet cladding interaction; pellet-cladding mechanical interaction; fuel enthalpy.
Fuel coolability by: cladding embrittlement; cladding oxidation; expulsion of fuel; fuel rod ballooning; structural fuel deformation.
Reactivity control by: control rod insertability.
Besides the different operational conditions for the fuel assemblies and the reactor core, the following points have to be considered in the design process that are relevant for a safe and efcient reactor operation: Core dimensions: dimensions of the fuel assemblies; core conguration6 ; core materials. Nuclear physics: burn-up distribution; mode of operation; power distribution. Thermohydraulics: coolant ow rate; temperature distribution; emergency cooling. Materials: irradiation performance; corrosion performance. Coolant chemistry.
5 A fuel system comprises the nuclear fuel along with the corresponding handling, operating and monitoring systems. 6 The core conguration species the arrangement of the fuel assemblies in the core.
12. Design Verication

12.1 Design Tools and Simulation
The fuel assemblies as well as the reactor core elements must meet a number of criteria as described in the previous chapter. These criteria refer to the performance during normal operation conditions, anticipated transients and accidents. In a rst step a design must be developed which is likely to meet the criteria. In a second step, it is necessary to verify that the criteria are actually met. For both tasks, i.e, design development and design verication, two methods are used: virtual experiments (calculations) based on a quantitative model and a computer program; real experiments in commercial or test reactors or laboratories.
Often calculations and real experiments are simultaneously used for tasks to develop a new design or to improve a given design and to prove that the criteria are met. These tasks can only be adequately accomplished on the basis of quantied models of the involved processes. There are two principally different types of quantitative models used in the design process. The traditional type describes the future development of a process in a purely deterministic or mechanistic way. In this case, the changes occurring within an advancing process are generally described by ordinary or partial differential equations. This traditional way of modelling is incapable of including the inherent randomness of future developments into the model. The second type of model is based on probability distributions and thus able to describe explicitly the existing randomness of the process development. The two types of models shall be illustrated by a simple example. Example: Radioactive Decay Traditional Model: Let the decay process be given by the number of atoms N (t ) at time t . The traditional model describes the changes in time (decay) by an ordinary differential equation: d N (t ) = N (t ) dt with initial conditions: N (0) = N0 Solving the initial value problem yields the following solution: N (t ) = N0 et (12.3) (12.2) (12.1)
where the parameter is characteristic for the considered element. Assume that in a special case = 0.3, N0 = 1000 and t = 3.0. Then using (12.3) for predicting the number of atoms for the considered situation at time t = 3 yields exactly one number namely N (3) = 497.87. This prediction will, of course, not occur as it is not an integer and more severe it does not account for the random uctuations of the decay process. Stochastic Model: In a stochastic model the number of atoms N (t ) at time t is a random variable which can adopt many different values with different probabilities given by the probability-mass-function fN (t ) dened as: fN (t ) (x) = PN (t ) ({x})
(12.4)
In Figure 12.1 a ctitious probability mass function is shown assuming that complete knowledge about the initial conditions is available.
f(x)
Figure 12.1: Probability-mass-function of the number of atoms N (t ) for t = 3 time units.
In order to determine a meaningful prediction based on a stochastic model, one must specify the required reliability level , i.e., a lower bound for the probability that the predicted event actually will (0.95) occur. Let us assume that = 0.95, i.e., the prediction event denoted by AN ({t }) shall occur with a probability of at least 95%. In this case we obtain for t = 3 the following result: AN with the probability: ( ) (0.95) PN (3) AN ({3}) = 0.9508 > 0.95 (12.6)
(0.95)
({3}) = {471, 472, . . . , 529}
(12.5)
Taking the integer N (3) = 498 as prediction obtained with the traditional model yields the following occurrence probability: PN (3) ({498}) = 0.026 (12.7) i.e., the predicted event will hardly ever occur. If a quantitative1 model is available, the process can be run virtually on a computer starting with the initial conditions and ending with the output of interest. This kind of experimentation is called simulation and each such virtual run of the process is called a simulation run. Any simulation run based on a deterministic model yields for the same initial and boundary conditions the same output value. In contrast simulation runs based on a probabilistic quantitative model yield different outputs for identical initial and boundary conditions as randomness is included into the model. A simulation based on a probabilistic model is called Monte Carlo simulation. For performing simulation runs the models are realized by computer programs that are called computer codes. The computer codes represent the most important tool for assessing the properties (e.g. ssion gas release in the fuel) of a given design with respect to performance and safety. They describe mathematically the development of different processes within the core during operational conditions as described in the sections of Chapter 11. There are three types of questions to be answered by means of the codes: What is the performance of the system during normal operations, during anticipated transients and during accidents? How large are the mechanical, thermohydraulic and nuclear safety margins? How could the systems performance be improved?
There are computer codes for the simulation of the behaviour of all the essential parts and processes of a nuclear power plant, such as the fuel assemblies, the reactor core, the reactor pressure vessel and the containment. The mathematical models must reect reality sufciently well so that the code output can be used as predictions of the future performance. Whether or not a computer code is sufciently realistic and yields a useful output must be controlled by experiments.
1 A quantitative model of a process describes its development by numbers and functions.
The computer codes for simulating the processes within the core consist typically of two interrelating parts that for the purpose of programming are considered as independent. The rst one models the neutron physical processes such as the neutron ux distribution, the power generation, and the criticality factors. The second part models the thermohydraulic processes such as the heat transport out of the core and the temperature distributions. Requirements for computer codes that incorporate necessarily simplications and approximations should make sure that the obtained results may be used. Therefore, some criteria should be formulated for computer codes in order to support management. The German Safety Standard KTA 3101.2 is used for illustrating that not all of such standards are really helpful. In Chapter 6 of the KTA Requirements for Nuclear Calculation Systems and after listing the areas that might be covered by computer codes, the following requirements are stated in Clause 32 : (3) Simplications and approximations in the models for the calculation of these phenomena are admissible. These include: a) b) the splitting of the overall problem into sub-problems, the inclusion of representative solutions of sub-problems in the solution of the overall problem such as ba)
calculation of the neutron ux and the reaction rates of a grid cell with idealized boundary conditions, bb) calculation of the neutron ux and the reaction rates in a larger grid section, for example a fuel assembly in its typical environment, bc) substitution of an explicit presentation of the reector by means of albedo boundary conditions or suitable homogenized reector representations, c) the simplied representation of the geometric and material structure of the reactor core such as homogenization of sub-areas of the reactor core, substitution of continuous local variables by a nite number of discrete meshes (spatial discretization), cc) explicit representation of the geometric structure in less than three spatial dimensions, cd) representation of the inuence of neglected spatial dimensions by means of suitable corrective terms, ce) combination of ssion products to form pseudo-nuclides, d) the spectral discretization of the continuous neutron or gamma spectrum, e) the discretization of burn-up (maintaining power density distribution constant during a burn-up step), f) the equation of heat source density with the product of ssion rate density and usable energy of ssion. A global consideration of the heat release in the structural material and in the coolant is admissible. Note:
The demonstration required for the admissibility of the simplications quoted is made by a review of validity and accuracy, see Section 6.1.
ca) cb)
The above list is however not very helpful since it only gives the requirement for acceptable simplications or approximations. It would have been more useful if the KTA would state explicit and checkable requirements for the codes that would assure their usefulness.
12.2
Code Verication and Validation
Design verication for nuclear fuel and reactor is performed for the most part by simulation using a computer code. The quality of a computer code is assessed by verication and validation which are essential parts of the code development process. Code verication aims at assuring that the code is programmed correctly, the algorithms have been implemented properly and the code does not contain errors, oversights, or bugs. By means of the verication it
2 http://www.kta-gs.de/welcome_engl.htm, p. 9, April 2009.
13. In-Core Fuel Management

13.1 The Tasks of In-Core Fuel Management
The task of in-core fuel management is to organize the operation of a nuclear reactor in a most efcient way and thus reducing the cost of generating electricity. According to Cochran and Tsoulfanidis (1990), in-core fuel management refers to the following four points: 1. 2. 3. 4. the study of the requirements and design of the fuel needed for successive cycles; the operational considerations related to fuel performance in the core; the core loading pattern; the activities during a refuelling outage.
There are different batches of fuel assemblies in a reactor core, where a batch consists of fuel assemblies of the same type and the same enrichment that are inserted into the core simultaneously as a group. The choice of the number of batches is made aiming at a high burn-up on the one hand and a small number of shutdowns for refuelling on the other. In Figure 13.1 a loading plan for a BWR is shown with eight batches and different types of fuel assemblies.
Figure 13.1: Left: A loading pattern plan with eight batches for a 1344 MWe-BWR with a 784 Fuel Assembly Core1 ; right: BWR reactor core with fresh fuel assemblies2 .
The number of shutdowns is determined by the cycle length which should be optimized with respect to protability. In Europe and Asia short shutdown periods in conjunction with short cycle lengths have proved to be more economic. In contrast, in the USA longer cycle lengths are more cost-efcient, because the disposal costs depend on the generated energy and not on the discharged fuel. In Europe and Asia, a PWR has typically four to ve batches, while a BWR has ve to eight batches. At the rst startup, the batches differ in the degree of fuel enrichment, while in the subsequent cycles they differ in the degree of fuel burn-up. During the reactor operation the fuel undergoes a variety of changes that refer to the generation of transuranic elements and the production of ssion products such as samarium
1 By courtesy of RWE Power AG. 2 By courtesy of Vattenfall Europe Nuclear Energy GmbH.
and xenon. As a consequence of these changes and the increased burn-up of the ssile material, the initial excess reactivity required for operating the reactor decreases in time. As soon as the excess reactivity has been consumed, the operation cycle comes to an end and the reactor is shut-down. During the outage the fuel assemblies with the highest burn-up are unloaded and replaced by fresh fuel assemblies and the fuel assemblies with a lower burn-up are moved within the core. The decision about the loading pattern of a new core is an essential part of the in-core fuel management. The core of AREVAs European power reactor (EPR) core consists of 241 fuel assemblies. For the rst core, the assemblies are split into four groups with different enrichments (high enrichment with gadolinium, high enrichment without gadolinium, medium enrichment and low enrichment). In Figure 13.2 a typical initial core loading is shown.
High Enrichment with Gadolinium High Enrichment without Gadolinium
Medium Enrichment Low Enrichment
Figure 13.2: Typical initial core loading of the EPR3 .
In PWR and BWR cores about one third (three batches) or one fourth (four batches) of the fuel assemblies are exchanged by fresh fuel assemblies during the periodically performed refuelling and maintenance shut downs. One task of the fuel management is to determine the fuel pattern that ensures a most economic use of fuel taking into account the neutron physical, thermohydraulic and mechanical boundary conditions (velocities, temperatures, concentrations, etc.), and the required safety criteria. The fuel loading pattern is either determined by the power plant staff 4 , or by a service provider5 or by the fuel supplier6 . The power output and the burn-up is approximately calculated for each of the fuel rods for the entire cycle length by analytical models, various optimization techniques and corresponding software programs7 . Because of the high complexity of the situation, the optimization problem cannot be solved analytically. A large number of approximation algorithms have therefore been proposed and are applied for nding solutions that are hopefully close to the optimal one. Currently, an approach called generic algorithm has gained some popularity. Whether, and to what extent, stochastic models and procedures can be used in in-core fuel management to describe the existing uncertainties is still an unanswered question.
13.2
Economic Considerations
The in-core fuel management should be looked at from the viewpoint of economic efciency implying that there are three objectives and one mandatory condition. The condition is safety that must be guaranteed as any accident may have disastrous consequences for the economic success. The objectives are the following:
3 By courtesy of AREVA NP. 4 For example by using the Studsvik Software, http://www.studsvik.se/files/STUDSVIK_Nuclear_Fuel_Analysis.pdf,
September 2008. 5 For example Siempelcamp NIS Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH, http://www.siempelkamp-nis.com/72.0.html, September 2008. 6 For example AREVA NP, http://www.areva-np.com/common/liblocal/docs/Brochure/BROCHURE_EPR_US_2.pdf, September 2008. 7 Berger (1999).
Shut-down time: The plant shut-down for performing the refuelling should occur during a period of low energy demand at which there are enough utility in-house reserves of power available to replace the missing energy without the necessity for the utility to buy power on the market. Fuel exploitation: The fuel should be efciently used, i.e., it should produce a large amount of energy with a small amount of irradiation waste. Refuelling organization: The refuelling should be completed as quickly as possible, where the activities refer to the unloading the fuel assemblies, the replacement of the spent fuel assemblies by fresh fuel assemblies, to the control and maintenance activities, to the reloading of the fuel assemblies and the subsequent restart of the plant.
Here we do not deal with the rst bullet but only with the second and third one. The reduction of the number of fuel assemblies to be reloaded and the number of fuel assemblies to be discharged are closely related to the achieved burn-up. As displayed in Figure 13.3, discharge burn-up of the fuel assemblies has been increased from former 35 MW d /kg to the present value of 55MW d /kg for both PWR and BWR. Some few fuel rods have even reached a peak pellet burn-up of about 100MW d /kg. To reach such an increase of discharge burn-up, the neutron economy was improved and the uranium enrichment increased.
Burn-Up [MWd/kgU]
60 Maximum Burn-Up 50
PWR 40 BWR
30
20 1980
1990
2000
Year of Discharge
Figure 13.3: The increase of the maximum discharge burn-up in PWR and BWR from 1985 to 2005.
Beside the neutron-physical improvements, the advancement of the fuel assembly designs8 has contributed to the increased discharge burn-up. This becomes very clear for the BWR fuel design. The former 8 8-2 design allowed a burnup of 35 MW d /kg, however, the modern Atrium 10 design9 allows a burn-up of more than 65 MW d /kg. The design dependent development is illustrated in Figure 13.4.
65 55 45 ATRIUM 9A ATRIUM 10 35 25 Burn-Up [MWd/kgU]
9x9-1
8x8-2
9x9-5
10
Figure 13.4: Development of the average discharge burn-up of BWR fuel during the last two decades10 .
Simultaneously with the increase of burn-up the use of MOX fuel was introduced in some countries with reprocessing facilities. Both changes have an immediate effect on the economic result and therefore must
9 Gocke et al. (2006). 10 Besides the Atrium 10 design of AREVA, there are other modern designs, for example, the GNF2-Concept of General
Electric and SVEA-Concept of Westinghouse Sweden. 11 Weber (2005).
14. Fuel Storage at the Reactor

14.1 On-site Wet and Dry Storage
The management of spent nuclear fuel has become one of the most important issues for all nuclear power plant operators. The rst stage of handling the fuel refers to the on-site storage facilities for non-irradiated fuel to be used for refuelling the core. The next storage state refers to irradiated fuel assemblies after discharge which have to be cooled down. There are two types of storage to be considered: wet storage of non-irradiated and irradiated fuel assemblies; dry storage of non-irradiated and irradiated fuel assemblies.
Originally, i.e., when the nuclear power plants were built in the 1970s and 1980s, the nuclear power plant operators anticipated that the spent fuel would be taken to a reprocessing facility or a nal disposal site as soon as the radioactivity had decreased sufciently. To this end the nuclear power plants have water pools for storing the fuel after its discharge from the core for about ve years. The water pools are either within the containment or in an adjacent spent fuel building that is linked to the reactor by a transfer tunnel. The capacity of the on-site water pools should guarantee at any time a full-core discharge of the fuel assemblies in the core in the case of a problem inside the pressure vessel. Therefore, the on-site water pools must never be operated to their full design capacity. Contrary to the expectations, up to now, no operating nal disposal site has been opened for regular operation. Also the reprocessing facilities did not meet the expectations due to economic and technical reasons. Moreover, in 1977 the U.S. government deferred reprocessing indenitely forcing the U.S. power plant operators to either expand their on-site storage capacity or nd other possibilities to store the spent fuel. As a consequence, the on-site storage facilities obtained a completely different task as an interim disposal site for irradiated fuel assemblies and in fact there are cases where irradiated Zircaloy clad fuel has been stored for over 40 years1 in wet storage. An immediate consequences of this assignment of new tasks was that additional storage capacity was necessary and the power plant operators therefore increased the capacity of on-site spent fuel pools considerably. Actually, the wet storage method represents a sound demonstrated technology for the safe storage of irradiated fuel for decades with negligible environmental impact2 . It is therefore not surprising that besides the at reactor (AR) pool storage facilities, there are away from reactor (AFR) pool storage facilities in operation in many countries. Because the maintenance of water pools is expensive, many nuclear power plant operators have additionally established dry-storage facilities on the reactor premises. The on-site storage facilities represent an important part of an interim storage strategy of any nuclear power operator. Besides these facilities there must also be away-from-reactor (AFR) storage facilities, as otherwise reactors are at risk of having to be shut down because of insufcient storage capacity. Any strategy has to consider political, legal and regulatory limits, but should also be based on public agreement and support. Currently, the development of a suitable (interim) storage strategy is therefore one of the crucial issues for the future of nuclear energy.
1 IAEA (1999), p. 3. 2 Cochran and Tsoulfanidis (1990), p. 283.
14.2
Wet Storage of Fuel Assemblies
Irradiated fuel assemblies discharged from the core are stored in at-reactor water pools that are often located in the containment of the reactor as illustrated in Figure 14.1.
Figure 14.1: Reactor building: left the reactor well with the rack for the upper core structure on the right, and rightmost the spent fuel pool3 .
The storage in on-site water pools is necessary because of the excessive radioactivity of the spent fuel. There are three types of radioisotopes to be found in the irradiated fuel: ssion products4 ; actinides5 ; activated products6 .
After the fuel assemblies are taken out of the core, they are put into a fuel storage rack in the pool that is designed differently for PWR and BWR fuel according to the type of the fuel assembly conguration. Originally, these racks had open sides and were constructed of stainless steel with a sufciently large distance between the fuel assemblies to avoid criticality problems. In order to store more fuel in the pool, the open racks were replaced with closed high-density racks made of an aluminium matrix with boron carbide evenly dispersed in it. Boron is a very good thermal neutron absorber permitting a close spacing of the fuel assemblies without the risk of approaching criticality. In contrast to a PWR storage pool there is no boric acid in the coolant of a BWR storage pool. However, the high-density racks are similar for BWR as for PWR storage pools. For ensuring subcriticality in both cases, the distance between the fuel assemblies is of crucial importance. Irradiated fuel discharged from the core exhibits a very high - activity and makes shielding necessary. At the pool shielding is ensured by the requirement that there is about 4 m depth of water above the fuel assemblies in the storage. Depending on the length of the used fuel assemblies, the pools are therefore about 10 m deep. Shielding must also be warranted during the transport of the irradiated fuel from the core to the pool. This is ensured by a fuel transfer mechanism that takes care that the fuel is always covered with water of at least 3 m height, even in case of an inadvertently lift by means of the crane. Beside safeguarding subcriticality and shielding against radiation, the decay heat of the irradiated fuel must be dissipated. If the decay heat of the assemblies in the core after shut-down should be too high, then discharging of the fuel assemblies is postponed until the decay heat has reached a permissible range. The heat in the racks that are loaded with fuel assemblies is removed by forced and natural convection. The water temperature in the pool ranges from 20 C to 50 C. As a matter of fact, Appendix A of the German standard KTA 33037 requires that the pool water temperature should be less than 45 C during normal operation and less than 60 C and 80 C for transients and accidents, respectively. Besides the storage pool in the containment (A) of the nuclear power plant there can be a second storage pool (B) outside the containment. The pools are connected by a tunnel and the fuel elements are taken by
3 By courtesy of Gsgen NPP. 4 More than 350 nuclides have been identied as ssion products. 5 The fteen elements with atomic numbers ranging from 89 (actinium) to 103 (lawrencium). 6 The activated products are in particular due to the activation of zirconium in the cladding. 7 http://www.kta-gs.de, May 2009.
the fuel transfer equipment from one pool to the other. To this end the fuel assembly is inserted by a crane into a rack that is turned horizontally and moved horizontally to its destination. In Figure 14.2 the B-pool of the Swiss nuclear power plant Gsgen with the fuel transfer equipment is shown.
Figure 14.2: View on the high-density rack of the storage pool (Building B) of the NPP Gsgen. On the left hand side is the fuel transfer equipment, on the right-hand-side a fuel rod changing device8 .
Sometimes there are even more than two pools in order to provide sufcient storage capacity. For example, the Swiss nuclear power plant (NPP) Gsgen has a third pool that is located in a separate building with a capacity of 1008 fuel assemblies. The heat removal in this third storage pool in Gsgen is done by passive cooling, i.e., by natural water circulation. If the water purity in the pool is maintained, the Zircaloy cladding is virtually immune to corrosion by oxidation9 due to the fact that the structural parts of the fuel assemblies are covered with a protective oxide layer. Necessary inspections and repairs of irradiated fuel are performed in the storage pool. Furthermore, the packaging of the irradiated fuel assemblies into casks for transport to dry storage or disposal is done in the storage pool either inside the containment or in an additional pool outside of the containment. The fuel assemblies are handled in the pool by means of mechanical arms or by cranes.
14.2.1
Risks Involved with Wet Storage
Although wet storage of irradiated fuel has proved to be safe and efcient, there are certain risks involved that have to be considered. These risks refer to a release of radioactivity that may happen in the course of an accident and result in radioactive contamination of the pool water or a discharge of radioactivity into the environment. A defect of the Zircaloy cladding of a fuel rod in the pool results in a radioactive contamination of the pool water. However, under normal storage conditions the contamination advances only slowly since the soluble parts of the fuel have already been largely dissolved in the reactor coolant10 . A considerable release of radioactivity into the environment may result from the damage of the fuel claddings and the subsequent release of radioactive gas. This might happen in the case of an excessive loss of pool water. The greatest danger refers to the complete loss of water which could occur due to an earthquake. To cope with this risk, the pool should have a seismic design particularly if it is located in an earthquake zone. Other potential causes for a release of radioactivity to the environment such as for example criticality or fuel assembly handling faults appear to be negligible.
8 By courtesy of Gsgen NPP. 9 OECD/NEA (2005), p. 144. 10 OECD/NEA (2005), p. 145.
15. Reprocessing of Spent Fuel

15.1 Signicance of Reprocessing
Spent fuel assemblies must be disposed off, i.e., the radioactive waste must be recycled without harming the environment or it must be properly put into repository. The issue of how to handle the spent fuel assemblies (high level radioactive waste) has yet not been resolved. The timely resolution to a safe and proper disposal of high level waste constitutes the probably most important task for nuclear fuel quality management. Besides the permanent storage of spent fuel, there is the possibility of reprocessing the spent fuel and reusing it for producing energy. The reprocessing of irradiated fuel assemblies is highly controversial and discussed in many countries. Besides some military aspects, the following two arguments in favor of reprocessing the spent fuel are most often mentioned: High level nuclear waste should be reprocessed and transferred into a form that allows a permanent and safe disposal. Unspent or in the reactor bred ssionable nuclides can be recovered as a valuable energy source.
The opposing arguments include the risk of unacceptable environmental side effects of the reprocessing process, economic inefciency and the danger of an uncontrolled proliferation of weapons-grade plutonium. The danger with respect to weapons proliferation, for example, made the United States decide not to reprocess spent fuel1 . While the Clinton Administration restated the entire processing policy of the Ford and Carter Administration, it was relaxed by the Bush Administration in the 2002 National Security Presidential Directive2 . In fact the issue of safeguards at reprocessing plants has been the subject of considerable attention from the very beginning of civilian reprocessing of spent fuel. However, according to the report Nuclear Safeguards and International Atomic Energy Agency, April 1995, of the US Congressional Ofce of Technology Assessment only a minority of the nuclear fuel reprocessing plants had implemented the complete IAEA safeguards3 . The reprocessing plants in the nuclear weapon states United Kingdom and France had only specied limited IAEA safeguards on a voluntary basis or only the EURATOM safeguards. There were no internationally controlled safeguards implemented in the reprocessing plants in Russia and USA. Moreover, the reprocessing plants in India, Pakistan, North-Korea and Israel were not under international control at all. Only the reprocessing plants in Japan had implemented complete IAEA safeguards (see Table 15.1 below). Besides the military and environmental concerns with respect to reprocessing, there is another surprising fact. A majority of the reprocessing plants were built in the 1960s and 1970s and most of them have been shut down.
15.2
Current State of Reprocessing
The reprocessing methods of spent nuclear fuel are categorized in aqueous and nonaqueous processes. In the case of an aqueous process, the fuel is dissolved in nitric acid. Subsequently, uranium and plutonium are obtained by chemical separation processes. The oldest used aqueous process was the bismuth phosphate process. It was developed and tested at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in the 1940s for obtaining plutonium by precipitation. Later, it was used on a large scale as part of the nuclear weapons
1 Cochran and Tsoulfanidis (1990), p. 214. 2 National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD-17) (2002). 3 http://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk1/1995/9530/953007.PDF, April 2009.
program at the Hanford Site. One of the main disadvantages of this process was that it could not be used to recover uranium. Aqueous precipitation processes as developed during the 1940s are no longer used for reprocessing purposes. Nowadays, there is practically only one reprocessing technique used in large scale reprocessing facilities, namely the aqueous process that is known under the name PUREX (Plutonium-Uraniumprocess Recovery by Extraction4 or Plutonium, URranium and EXtraction5 ) that is based on extraction. Besides the PUREX process, other aqueous extraction processes have been developed that are known as REDOX, BUTEX, EUREX and THOREX processes. The processes differ in the used organic extracting agent as for example tributyl phosphate (TBP), ketone, ether and amine. The essential extraction steps are listed below: extraction of U V I and PuIV or PuV I ; reduction of PuIV or PuV I obtaining PuIII and separation of plutonium and uranium; backwash of U V I into the aqueous solution; clean-up of uranium by the extraction of U V I in the organic phase and backwash into the aqueous phase; clean-up of plutonium after oxidation to PuIV by extraction in the organic phase and backwash into the aqueous phase after reduction to PuIII .
Table 15.1 shows the worldwide development and the present state of the commercial reprocessing plants. All of them use the PUREX technique6 .
Table 15.1: Commercial reprocessing plants with capacity given in tonnes uranium metal per year (tU /a). Location Capacity Safeguard Commissioning or [tU /a] operating period Mol (B) 80 EURATOM 1966-1974 Karlsruhe (G) 35 IAEA, EURATOM 1971-1990 Marcoule (F), UP 1 1.200 EURATOM 1958-1997 La Hague (F), UP 2 800 limited IAEA 1966-1987 La Hague (F), UP 2-400 400 1976-2003 La Hague (F), UP 2-800 800/1000 1994 La Hague (F), UP 3 800 limited IAEA 1990 Windscale 300/750 EURATOM 1951-1964 Sellaeld (GB), Magnox 1.500 EURATOM 1964 Dounreay (GB) 8 limited IAEA 1980-1998 Sellaeld (GB), THORP 1.200 EURATOM 1997 Trombay (IND) 60 no 1965 Tarapur (IND) 100 IAEA in case 1982 of safeguarded fuel Kalpakkam (IND) 100 no 1998 Tokai Mura (J) 210 IAEA 1977 Rokkashomura (J) 800 IAEA 2006 Tscheljabinsk (RUS) 400 no 1978 Krasnojarsk RT-2 (RUS) 1.500 no in construction West Valley (USA) 300 no 1966-1972
All reprocessing have in common that they can be divided into four process steps that will be described in more detail in the next section: 1. 2. 3. 4. head-end treatment; chemical separation; tail-end treatment or nal purication; reconversion, as a preliminary stage of refabrication.
4 Nuclear Reprocessing, page 2, http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/130238, March 2009. 5 Nuclear Fuel: Developing New Processes, http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/v36_1_03/article_05.shtml,
March 2009.
6 http://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/r/reprocessing-plants-ww.htm, 14 November 2008.
15.3
The PUREX Process
The current standard process for reprocessing of spent fuel is the PUREX process, which shall therefore be described here in more detail. In Figure 15.1, a schematically representation of the PUREX process is given beginning with taking the spent fuel assemblies from the fuel storage pool and transporting them to the reprocessing plant that generally is located far away from the reactor.
Fuel Storage Pool Transport of Fuel Assemblies Disassembly
Head End Operations
Chopped Fuel Dissolution Cladding Tube Residues
U , Pu and Waste Solution Chemical Separation

Extraction Fission Product and Actinide Wastes
U , Pu Solution
Separation
U Solution Purication U Purication
Pu Solution Pu Purication
Reconversion
UF6
PuO2
Figure 15.1: Schematic representation of the PUREX process.
The four reprocessing steps of the PUREX process are as follows: Head-End The head-end operations comprise the mechanical or chemical separation of nuclear fuel from the cladding tube material. After the top and bottom end plugs have been dismantled, the separation of fuel material and cladding tube material is accomplished in two steps. The rst one consists of chopping the fuel rods into pieces of about 5cm length. The subsequent chemical separation consists of dissolving the cladding tube material and the fuel in nitric acid. Chemical Separation The commercially used PUREX process is a countercurrent extraction method using an organic solvent containing about 30% tributyl phosphate (TBP). The fact that TBP is able to extract tetravalent and hexavalent metals was detected by J.C. Warf7 . For the recovery of uranium from the nitric mother liquor of the bismuth-phosphate process, TBP was used in the Metal Recovery Plant in Oak Ridge Tennessee in the USA. Subsequently, the process was further developed for obtaining directly uranium and plutonium from irradiated nuclear fuel according to the following equations:
+ UO2 2 + 2NO3 + 2T BP UO2 (NO3 )2 (T BP)2
(15.1) (15.2)
Pu
4+
+ 4NO 3 + 4T BP
Pu(NO3 )4 (T BP)2
The rst commercial PUREX facility was the Savannah River Plant near Aiken in South Carolina, USA, established in 1954. Two years later in 1956, the reprocessing plant in Hanford/Richland (State Washington) was opened. Later, PUREX facilities were built in England, Soviet Union, France, Germany, Japan, India, Pakistan China, North Korea, Israel and further plants in the USA. Today, all
7 Warf (1949).
16. Interim and Final Disposal

16.1 The Nuclear Waste Issue
The issue of handling nuclear waste started with the rst atomic ssion and has as yet not been resolved. The resolution of this issue is essential for the nuclear industry, if nuclear power plants are to be allowed to continue to operate. Currently, the spent fuel pools on reactor sites are lling up. Both the planned reprocessing plants and the plans for nal geological disposal are delayed and have left reactor operators with far more spent fuel to manage than was expected, when the nuclear plants were designed and built. Only recently (June 2009), however, the president of the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company (SKB) Claes Thegerstrm announced that Forsmark, in the municipality of sthammar, was selected for Swedens permanent disposal site for used nuclear fuel. Site works towards the underground facility could begin in 2013, with full construction starting in 2015 and operation in 20231 . The mere fact of the present situation indicates a failure of the management of spent fuel and radioactive waste. At the beginning of the nuclear era, nuclear energy was utilized by the military that laid emphasis on the site selection and the safety of the reactors while the disposal of nuclear waste was handled in a hazardous way. The Hanford Site, which comprised 9 nuclear reactors producing plutonium, 5 reprocessing plants and 200 tanks storing nearly 200, 000 m3 of high-level radioactive waste in Washington State may serve as an example. The Washington State Department of Health reports: Because of the secrecy surrounding nuclear weapons production, the public did not know much about Hanfords operational details until 1986. By February of that year, citizen pressure had forced the U.S. Department of Energy to release 19,000 pages of Hanford historical documents that had been previously unavailable to the public. These pages revealed there had been huge releases of radioactive materials into the environment that contaminated the Columbia River and more than 75,000 square miles of land. Many people were outraged at the four decades of secrecy and deception. They felt they had been betrayed by their own government. They demanded to know how the government could have kept such dangers secret for so long.2 The developments of the use of nuclear energy have been hold secret according to the mandate of the U.S. Atomic Act of 1946. This secretiveness combined with information about accidents and careless handling of radioactive waste that could not be hold secret caused public opposition towards nuclear energy. This negative attitude can also be seen in the protests against transports of spent fuel. For example, the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel3 reports that the costs for one transport of six Castor casks in March 2001 from the French reprocessing plant in LA Hague to the German interim storage Gorleben had been calculated to be around 100 million Deutsche Mark (about 65 million $). About thirty thousand policemen safeguarded the transport. Consequently, the nuclear waste issue is twofold. First and above all a disposal strategy must be developed that is safe in the sense that the radioactive waste does not endanger the environment, the living generation and the coming generations of mankind. Simultaneously, a communication strategy must be developed that convinces the public that exploiting nuclear energy is benecial not only for the power plant operators but for mankind.
1 http://world-nuclear-news.org/WR_Forsmark_for_Sweden_nuclearwaste_0306091.html, August 2009. 2 http://www.doh.wa.gov/hanford/publications/overview/overview.html, May 2009. 3 http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,druck-124618,00.html, May 2009.
16.2
Implications of Nuclear Waste
The waste produced by man4 may occur in gaseous, liquid and solid form and as a matter of fact almost any waste holds environmental hazards, if the amount released exceeds the limits determined by the natural recycling capacity of the environment. For example the atmosphere can eliminate a huge amount of carbon dioxide, however, if this limit is exceeded, the composition of the atmosphere changes, i.e., the atmosphere becomes unstable and instability constitutes a danger per se. The same holds true for all global life-sustaining systems. For the bigger part of its existence, mankind was not able to produce enough waste to approach the selfpreservation limits of the environment. This changed only during the Industrial Age in the late 18th and early 19th century. Then the so-called advanced technological processes started without considering the consequences of waste, with the result that soil, water and air are globally polluted and the genetic diversity has become depleted to an alarming extent. Only in the case when the problems due to pollution become too large, strategies are developed to locally eliminate the severest symptoms. However, on a global level the destruction continues in an ever increasing speed. Besides the many common features, there are two major differences between nuclear industrial waste and regular industrial waste: High-level nuclear waste remains thermally hot and highly radioactive for hundred thousands of years. Reprocessing involves the production of large quantities of weapons-grade plutonium that represent a great danger for peace.
These two features are characteristic of nuclear waste and pose a severe challenge to the nuclear industry and technology. However, one should have in mind that not only nuclear wastes are dangerous and cause environmental problems. Producing energy by burning fossil fuels coal, oil, and gas has generated problems that probably exceed those of any other human activity5 namely: the greenhouse effect, which is changing the Earths climate; acid rain, which is destroying forests and killing sh; air pollution, which is killing tens of thousands of American citizens every year, while making tens of millions ill and degrading our quality of life in other ways.
However, burning fossil fuels goes along with a positive connotation, while generating energy by nuclear ssion is notionally connected with the atomic bomb. Moreover, a small amount of abused plutonium may throw mankind into a nightmare. The public perception of nuclear waste is therefore different and this fact must be considered by nuclear fuel management. In contrast to the dangers of burning fossil fuels which were recognized only a few years ago, the inherent dangers of nuclear waste were known long ago, but not taken seriously enough in due time neither by the nuclear industry nor by the regulatory authorities as noted in Cochran and Tsoulfanidis (1990). For example, in the USA, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) became law only as recent as in 1983. The act addresses the following four problem areas: repositories for disposal of high-level waste and spent nuclear fuel; interim storage program; monitored retrievable storage (MRS); low-level radioactive waste.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act also stipulated the establishment of an Ofce of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) that should take care of an agreement between the federal government and the nuclear utilities. Accordingly, the utilities have to pay a certain fee into a Nuclear Waste Fund by which the full responsibility for a proper disposal of the nuclear wastes is shifted to the government. The success of the Ofce of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management can be described as follows:
4 Actually, there is probably no creature except man that produces waste! 5 http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter3.html, January 2009.
The purpose of this organization was to design and construct facilities that would accept and start disposing of spent nuclear fuel and high-level wastes by January 31, 1998. Almost two decades have passed since the act was signed into law, and after the expenditure of several billion dollars, we still have no rm date for disposal of high-level nuclear wastes6 .
16.3
Classication of Radioactive Waste
There is no standard for classifying radioactive waste. However, the following categories are often considered: High-level wastes (HLW) consist of the spent fuel, the highly radioactive material resulting from reprocessing of spent fuel, including liquid waste produced directly by reprocessing, and any solid material derived from such liquid waste, and material from the core of a nuclear reactor or a nuclear weapon. The high level waste contains ssion products and transuranics which have very different decay characteristics. The ssion products decay within about 1000 years (see Figure 16.1) to harmless levels of radioactivity, while the necessary time for the transuranics may be 500000 years or longer. Because of the different decay behavior, nuclear waste with transuranic elements is sometimes considered as a category of its own. Transuranic wastes (TRU) is high-level nuclear waste containing elements with an atomic number larger than 92 (the atomic number of uranium). In the USA, it is considered as a category of its own. It is especially produced in the defense programs particularly in the course of the plutonium separation processes7 . Low-level wastes (LLW) consist of material that has become radioactive through exposure to neutron radiation or that is contaminated with radioactive material. Low-level waste typically consists of contaminated clothing, wiping rags, mops, lters, reactor water treatment residues, etc. with a radioactivity above the natural background level and may require shielding. Because of the low level of radioactivity, after storage for a period of 10 to 50 years, most of the isotopes have decayed to a point that it can be disposed off like normal garbage8 . Intermediate-level waste is dened as being neither high-level nor low-level nuclear waste. Generally it has a higher radioactivity than low-level waste and may require shielding.
Besides the waste produced in a reactor or reprocessing plant, there are two further categories of radioactive wastes produced during the front-end processes: Uranium mill tailings are sometimes classied as radioactive waste9 . The problems of its disposal have been briey mentioned in Section 1.3.1. Natural occurring and accelerator-produced radioactive materials (NARM) are wastes that can have relatively high radioactivity. Naturally occurring radioactive materials contain radionuclides found in nature and being concentrated through human activity, such as mineral extraction. Radioactivity can be high in the case of high concentration. Accelerator-produced radioactive waste is produced when atomic particles are accelerated by magnetic forces for medical, research, or industrial purposes.
The danger that emanates from nuclear wastes is the radiation, i.e., at each decay the material emits energy that is large enough to ionize atoms and molecules and, thus, damage living tissue by generating for instance cancer or genetic defects. The number of decays per time unit is called activity and it is quantied by units Becquerel10 [Bq] dened as follows: 1 Bq = one decay per second
6 Saling and Fentiman (2002), p. ix. 7 Cochran and Tsoulfanidis (1990), p. 299. 8 Rao (2001), p. 1539. 9 Cochran and Tsoulfanidis (1990), p. 277. 10 Antoine Henri Becquerel (18521908), French physicist, discovered radioactivity.
(16.1)
17. Transport Requirements

17.1 Global Aspects
From the very beginning, the development of nuclear industry has been a global project based on the possibility of safely transporting nuclear material by road, rail, sea and air. Consequently, the transportation containers for nuclear materials have gained an important position in the entire nuclear fuel cycle. Actually, there are only a few manufacturers specialized in the development and production of packaging nuclear materials. The most important producers are listed below: Germany: GNS Gesellschaft fr Nuklear-Service mbH; Germany: NCS Nuclear Cargo + Service GmbH; Japan: NFT Nuclear Fuel Transport Co., LTD.; France: TN Transnuclear, Inc. (Transnuclaire); Belgium: TNB Transnubel.
The fuel vendors deliver the fuel (uranium, MOX, ERU) by transport containers which the fuel vendors have manufactured themselves according to the regulations in their respective country. Before the different cases of transportation of nuclear material are briey described, its role and signicance must be claried.
17.2
Signicance of Nuclear Transports
The signicance of nuclear transports is reected by the following words1 : Without the ability to transport nuclear wastes and spent fuel to safer or less congested storage facilities sometimes across national boundaries it is likely that civilian nuclear power programs do not have a future. Consequently, the successful transport of materials involved in the nuclear fuel cycle constitutes one of the main issues of nuclear quality management. In some countries such as Germany, nuclear transports have emerged as the Achilles heel of commercial nuclear technology. The actual very safe transports2 of nuclear materials are taken by anti-nuclear organizations as most welcome opportunities to produce themselves against an inhuman and dangerous technology. The resulting violent controversies surrounding the transports of radioactive wastes have left their mark in some countries, such as Japan and Germany. Although not directly responsible for securing the safe transport of nuclear wastes by rail, car or water carriage, the management of nuclear power plants should take into consideration these prejudicial occurrences into the decision making processes. The following reports3 about nuclear transports in Germany indicate the severity of the corresponding problems and the necessity to analyze the phenomenon that not only a few radical persons, but thousands of normal citizens engage in the riots against actually safe transports. The necessity becomes clear, if one reads the reports in the media and considers the effect of them on the overall public opinion about nuclear energy.
1 ONeal (1998), p. 4. 2 There are transports of hazardous materials which are by far more dangerous and which in contrast to transports of
nuclear wastes have led to many accidents with large numbers of fatalities. 3 Mller (2007), p. 59.
The third shipment to Gorleben was planned for early March 1997. Six casks of high-level nuclear waste were accompanied by a largest mobilization of force in the postwar history, 30,000 policeman. Tens of thousands of protestors attempted to block the shipment throughout the nation, 20,000 in the Dannenberg/Gorleben area alone, where more than 500 were arrested and 175 injured. Roads in the region were barricaded and dug up by local farmers. Rail lines were sabotaged. The cost to the government nally showed an amount of $100 million. One year later, the German authorities began the next attempt: In March 1998, the German government again moved six casks to a different storage facility holding the remains of a decommissioned experimental thorium reactor at Ahaus, close to the Dutch border. This time, the German government changed tactics while announcing a shipment date, but started the shipment six days earlier in an effort to throw off protestors. In the resulting chaos, the 30,000 policeman guarding the shipment were also thrown off by the early start. 7,000 protestors reached Ahaus anyway, but with no time to plan, which nally ended up in a less disciplined protest. Scores were hurt, more than 1,000 were arrested. Thousands more protested across the transport route, which traverses major cities, including a violent outbreak in the college town of Gttingen. The nal bill for the government ends up at $100 million. But the political cost can be stated to be terminal. And as if that were not enough, the public mistrust in nuclear management was conrmed almost simultaneously as reported by Mller (2007). The worth of this situation accumulated while in April 1998 the French government announced that the fuel in German Castor canisters which have been moved to La Hague for reprocessing were emitting a radiation ve times above the accepted limit. On May 12, French ofcials said that a contamination from the Castors had exceeded the radiation limits by up to 3,000 times. On May 21, the German Minister of Environment, Angela Merkel4 , who was in favour with the shipments to both La Hague and Gorleben, suspended all shipments anywhere. If transportation of nuclear materials is to continue through Germany, one should draw some lessons from the above described happenings and develop a strategy that should aim at de-escalating the emotions and gradually gain the public acceptance. Following the general outline of FQMH-I, a technical description of nuclear transportation is given, while the indicated managerial problems will be treated in the subsequent volumes.
17.3
Front End and Back End
Transports within the nuclear fuel cycle are classied as either front end or back end transports. The front end transports begin with uranium mining and end with the transportation of the nuclear fuel assemblies to the power plants. The back end transports refer to the spent fuel leaving the power plant to the various interim or nal storages or to the reprocessing facilities and from there back to the fuel fabrication facilities and the disposal sites, respectively. The front end transports refer to nonirradiated fuel material. It starts with uranium ore that is mainly found in North America, Australia, South Africa and Central Asia. The uranium ore concentrate of U3 O8 , (known as yellowcake), is transported from the mines to conversion plants in North America, Europe and Russia, from where the produced uranium hexauoride is transported to enrichment plants in Western Europe, Russia and North America. The enriched uranium hexauoride is then transported to the UO2 -conversion and fuel manufacturing plants that are located in many countries across the World. The depleted uranium is shipped to the disposal sites. Finally the fuel assemblies that are some 4 m long are taken to the more than 400 nuclear power plants that are located in 32 different countries. The transports are performed by road, rail or sea. In Figure 17.1, the different transport steps are illustrated. The different stages of the nuclear fuel cycle are distributed over the entire world and the transports are therefore generally made across many national borders and even between different continents.
4 Angela Merkel, born in 1954, became German chancellor in 2005.
3 2 1 8
5 6 7
Figure 17.1: Front end and back end transports of radioactive materials within the nuclear fuel cycle5 .
In contrast to unirradiated front end material, the back end material is intensely radioactive, thus requiring special precautions. The back end material is transported mainly by rail and sea. According to the World Nuclear Transport Institute, there are about 20 million transports of radioactive materials around the world each year. The transport of nuclear material is one of the most important issues of a successful quality management of the nuclear fuel cycle, as any disruption of material ows would immediately affect all operations. Particularly, the transports of irradiated fuel are to be mentioned here, as they are the favored targets of public protests as described in the previous section. The security of the transport is therefore endangered rather by the public protests than by technical or safety problems. In fact the countries have taken over the responsibility for these transports, while nuclear quality management seems to be hardly involved.
17.4
Safety and Security
Security measures aim at guarding against intentional malicious acts, i.e., theft of nuclear material and terrorist actions. Safety measures aim at shielding the public from radiation. The following points have to be considered when performing a transport: ofcial regulations; documented operating instructions; required package; transport documentation; handling; available inventories.
The most important regulations for the transport of nuclear material is undoubtedly the relevant IAEA Safety Standard6 that is reected in the national regulations for transporting nuclear material. The IAEA Safety Standard prescribes how the material must be adequately packaged to provide protection against the dangers under both normal and potential accident conditions.
17.5
The IAEA Safety Standards TS-R-1
The current version of the IAEA Safety Standards for protecting people and the environment is given in the 2005 edition of the Safety Requirements No. TS-R-1, Regulations for the Safe Transport of Radioactive Material. The rst version of the regulations was published in 1961, and since then it has been continuously updated.
5 http://www.wnti.co.uk/nuclear-transport-facts/what-is-transported-and-how, January 2009. 6 IAEA (2005b).
18. Transports Within the Fuel Cycle

18.1 Transport of Uranium Ore Concentrate
Nuclear material is transported by road, rail, sea and air according to the IAEA standards. Below, brief accounts of the transportation of the different nuclear materials within the nuclear fuel cycle are given. Uranium ore concentrate (UOC or U3 O8 ) is transported in steel drums generally by road, rail or sea from the mining site to the conversion facility, where it is converted into gaseous uranium hexauoride, which enables its enrichment. UOC is classied as a dangerous good under UN number UN2912 and bears the name Radioactive Material, Low Specic Activity (LSA-1) Non-Fissile or Fissile-Excepted. The transportation of UOC by road or rail is regulated according to the respective national laws, while sea transport follows the international standards. Australia is one of the biggest producers of uranium ore concentrate (UOC). For the transport, the UOC is packaged and sealed in 205 liter steel drums that are stowed inside 20 foot ISO sea freight containers as shown in Figure 18.1 by means of a webbed kevlarbased strapping system.
Figure 18.1: 205 liter steel drums in a 20 foot sea freight container for transporting uranium ore concentrate from Australia to the conversion sites.
18.2
Transport of UF6
The uranium hexauride must be delivered to the enrichment facility in transport containers (see Figure 18.2) meeting the ISO standard 7195:2005 (Packaging uranium hexauoride (UF6 ) for transport). The same containers are used for the removal of the depleted uranium (tails). They have a diameter of about 1.2 m, a length of about 3.8 m, and a wall thickness of 16 mm. They contain about 12.5 tonnes uranium hexauoride.
Figure 18.2: UF6 -transport to the enrichment plant Gronau1 .

Three main types of containers serve for the transport of enriched uranium hexauoride UF6 referred to as 48X, 48Y and 30B. The 30B steel container is the mostly used container for enriched uranium uoride. It has a volume of about 730 l , a diameter of about 76 cm, a length of 206 cm and a wall thickness of about 13 mm. The maximum tare weight is about 650 kg and the net weight about 2300 kg. During transport, the container is safeguarded by a so-called overpack (see Figure 18.3).
Fusible Plugs Stainless Steel Phenolic Foam Wood Top Half Overpack
Handling Lugs
.
Toggle Fasteners
Tie-Down Bracket and Fork Lift Hold Lower Half Overpack
Elastomer Seal 30B Cylinder
Figure 18.3: The Cogema 30B overpack cask for the UF6 -transport2 .
The depleted uranium hexauoride UF6 in the casks is a white crystalline solid. If the temperature in a cask lled with UF6 at low temperatures increases, it may burst, as an increase of the temperature from 20 C to up to 90 C results in a volume increase of UF6 by about 40%. According to the safety regulations3 the transport cylinders must be lled to less than 62% of their capacity, the pressure within the cylinders must be below the outside atmospheric pressure, and they must be free of cracks or other defects. Some accidents have been reported during UF6 transports, for example, the cargo ship Mont-Louis that sank in the North Sea 10.5 nautical miles north of Ostend on Saturday the 25th of August 1984. The Mont-Louis came from Le Havre and was bound to Riga. Its load included 350 tonnes of uranium hexauoried in 30 containers of Type 48Y (see Figure 18.4) to be enriched in the Soviet Union. Additionally, the ship was carrying 22 empty Type 30B containers that were intended for the return of the enriched uranium.
Figure 18.4: Such containers for uranium hexaoride were safely rescued after the Mont-Louis accident4 .
The Mont-Louis sank after the collision with the car ferry Olau Britannia. However, all 30 uranium hexauoride 48Y type containers and 16 of the 22 empty 30B type containers were recovered. An examination of the containers revealed that only one of them had a very small leak in a closure valve.
1 By courtesy of URENCO Deutschland GmbH. 2 By courtesy of AREVA NT. 3 Shipment of UF is regulated, for example, by the US Department of Transportation (DOT) in 49 CFR Part 173, 6
Subpart I, Class 7 (Radioactive) Materials.

4 http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull271/27104592832.pdf, January 2009.
After uranium hexauoride has been taken to the enrichment plants it is stored in large warehouse as shown in Figure 18.5.
Figure 18.5: UF6 storage5 .
18.3
Transport of UO2 -Powder or UO2 -Pellets
According to the IAEA requirements, transportation of uranium dioxide is carried out in Type A ssile packages (see Figure 18.6). One of them is the TN-UO2 package of Cogema Logistics with a diameter of 40 cm and a height of 80.5 cm. The inner capacity is 23.7 liters, and its maximum gross weight is 95 kg with a maximum payload of between 32.5 and 38 kg depending on the degree of enrichment.
Figure 18.6: The TN-UO2 packagings for the transportation of UO2 developed by Cogema Logistics6 .
18.4
Transport of PuO2 -Powder
The PuO2 -powder that is needed for the manufacturing of MOX fuel pellets is transported from the reprocessing facility in France (Cogema, La Hague) to the MOX-manufacturing plants, for instance, in Belgium. Shipments of plutonium have to full the highest physical safety requirements that are specied in the IAEA document INFCIRC 225/Rev.4 and in national regulations and guidelines. Transportation of plutonium-containing products is carried out exclusively using Type B(U) Fissile packaging. In Germany and France the transport of PuO2 is carried out in containers of Type FS47 (see Figure 18.7), produced by the French company Transnuclaire (TN). Each container has a capacity of about 15 kg PuO2 powder.
5 By courtesy of AREVA NT. 6 http://www.euronuclear.org/pdf/RRFM%202003%20Transactions%20Internet.pdf, January 2010.
19. Quality Management

19.1 Science of Quality Management
Quality Management is responsible for the quality of a system aiming at increasing whenever possible its efciency. The Science of Quality Management supports the management by providing the appropriate means for analyzing the achieved state of a system and for developing protable changes. The primary task of quality management is to foresee changes in the dependability of the relevant processes and products by an adequate control policy in conjunction with reliable scientic prediction procedures. Scientic prediction takes into account the inherent uncertainty of future developments based on a veried stochastic model in contrast to pseudo-scientic approaches that rely on belief. One of the most important factors for a successful quality management is to accept and to internalize that most failures are preventable. In other words, the task of quality management is to actively shape the future development by adequate decisions. Any occurring failure should not end with its identication and removal, but should prompt an investigation for possible weaknesses of: the design; the material selection; the handling and preparation; the processes.
The aim of the investigation should be to identify the weakness of the system that has permitted the failure and subsequently to develop necessary changes of the system to prevent or at least to reduce the probability of occurrence of the same or similar failures. Any performed activity must be based on all the available knowledge about the properties of the involved items and must aim at improving the future dependability and, thus, increasing the prot. Without appropriate working knowledge, the decisions and activities may run out of control and make an sustainable dependability of products and processes impossible. The needed working knowledge typically differs from purely academic knowledge, as it must cover practical experiences. One should have in mind that in general advanced academic degrees without sufcient practical insight complicate straightforward activities. The main emphasis of a good quality management must be laid on the implementation of a reliable prediction system based on an appropriate monitoring system. Monitoring should not end it itself, but should meet clearly formulated requirements which result from the implemented prediction and decision-making procedures. Any cosmetic monitoring activity should be omitted, as it reduced the prot and may draw off the attention from the relevant issues. To maintain consistently dependable processes and products, quality management must comply with the following three requirements: 1. 2. 3. master the underlying sciences that include physics, chemistry, and material sciences; use the knowledge to develop and manage the relevant processes; identify and eliminate all elements of artistry in the production and organizational processes that only increase costs and prevent appropriate decisions.
A quality management that meets these requirements may be called scientic or future-driven, in contrast to a pseudo-scientic or past-driven management that only aims at maintaining a status quo by detecting and eliminating failures, without improving the robustness of the system against repeated occurrence of the same and other failures. For an effective quality management, the future must have absolute priority, while the status quo which is disclosed by monitoring, inspecting and measuring activities constitutes only a means for protable changes.
In this rst volume of the FQMH an overview is given about the necessary technical working knowledge for a successful quality management of nuclear power plants. This seems to be necessary to widen the view of the involved technical, organizational and legal experts who typically have practical experiences only on their own limited eld of activity. The FQMH shall therefore enable the view on the whole system including the existing strengths and weaknesses as a necessary condition for proper decisions. The following volumes deal with legal side conditions and organizational processes in the eld of nuclear energy and nally with scientic methods that can be employed to arrive at a strategy of continuous improvements. The following nal sections of this rst volume of the FQMH are devoted to illustrate the above stated general considerations about an effective quality management by the special case of nuclear energy with its specic problems.
19.2
Nuclear Fuel Management Problems
Nuclear fuel quality management represents a challenging task of global dimension which must be considered in the context of state and development of human societies. As stated above, the general task of nuclear fuel quality management is to improve the efciency of nuclear industry for the benet of the company and the society. As mentioned earlier, there are four problems to be solved by quality management namely: 1. 2. 3. 4. securing safety; securing fuel supply; securing public acceptance; improving protability.
A failure to solve one of the rst three problems may lead to a discontinuation of commercial nuclear power plants, while a failure to improve protability may result in serious competitive disadvantages. To formulate appropriate requirements for management, one must identify the nature of the listed problems. Safety, supply and public acceptance are constraints that have to be dened and subsequently met. But neither of them represents a goal for optimization. If safety, supply and public acceptance are achieved, the task remains to maintain this state, as there is no need to further improve it. Protability on the other hand constitutes a goal for everlasting improvements and never ending activities. For example, any change of a safe system does not aim to enhance safety, but to increase the efciency of the involved processes as otherwise safety had not been achieved beforehand. From a quantitative point of view, the problem of nuclear fuel management is an optimization problem with constraints. The objective function refers to the prot, while safety, supply and public acceptance form the constraints. In order to develop solution strategies for this optimization problem, it would be desirable to quantify the constraints as well as the objective in order to reach affectively the following goals: maintaining safety; ensuring supply for the future; gaining public acceptance; increase protability.
In nuclear industry, the protability is especially closely related to an undisturbed operation of the power plants. If an undisturbed operation is not warranted, protability will suffer from expenses due to failures and due to possibly shut-down times. However, unnecessarily large margins for failure prevention increase the costs, reduce the energy output and diminish the prot. In other words, the required margins and the protability are closely related. The margins are based on calculations by the relevant computer codes. As described in Section 12.5 deterministic computer codes are used, besides probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) that have been introduced in the early 1970s for quantifying and analyzing the margins. The decadelong experience with nuclear power plants show that the used approach is absolutely reliable to secure safety by yielding large enough safety margins. However in view of protability, the question arises whether or not the currently used approaches for uncertainty quantication result in too conservative margins and consequently affect adversely protability. Thus, uncertainty quantication may become the key for a further enhancement of the protability of nuclear power plants. The need for a better quantication of uncertainty has been identied and demanded, for
instance, in a recent publication of the US National Academy of Sciences, Washington DC, which contains an attempt to quantify uncertainty. The authors state: The national security laboratories have focused much of their effort for uncertainty quantication on computing the sensitivity of code output to uncertainties in input parameters. A broader effort is necessary. Methods for the identication, quantication, aggregation, and propagation of uncertainties require further development.1 The fact that uncertainty is not included in most of the nuclear computer codes opens a huge eld for further efforts with the aim of developing an adequate uncertainty quantication and to improve the efciency of the energy generation in nuclear power plants. The above mentioned report of the National Academy of Sciences continues: There are serious and difcult problems to be resolved in uncertainty quantication, however, including physical phenomena that are modeled crudely or not at all, the possibility of unknown unknowns, lack of computing power to guarantee convergence of codes, and insufcient attention to validating experiments. Actually, uncertainty quantication represents a difcult, but also the most promising area for improving the protability of nuclear power plants. It is difcult, because uncertainty has so far not been appropriately considered in physics. The approaches in physics to model reality are persistently deterministic and thus not applicable to describe indeterminate developments that are characteristic of real world. For modelling reality by considering both aleatoric uncertainty and epistemic uncertainty the stochastic approach has been developed and which is briey outlined in Section 12.4. A more in-depth representation together with the implications to nuclear fuel management will be given in the fourth volume of the FQMH.
19.3
A Short Note on Quantication of Uncertainty
As explained above the development and application of an appropriate quantication of uncertainty represents a promising possibility to improve the efciency nuclear power plants. In Section 11.1.6, it was mentioned that one often distinguishes between aleatoric uncertainty and epistemic uncertainty, where the former arises from randomness, and the latter from lack of knowledge or ignorance. In the above cited publication of the US National Academy of Sciences, the following recommendation and nding with respect to uncertainty is given: Recommendation. The national security laboratories should continue to focus attention on quantifying uncertainties that arise from epistemic uncertainties such as poorly modeled phenomena, numerical errors, coding errors, systematic uncertainties in experiment. Finding. In characterizing uncertainties it is important to pay attention to the distinction between those arising from incomplete knowledge (epistemic or systematic) and those arising from deviceto-device variation (aleatory or random)2 .
Unfortunately, in practice the demanded distinction between the two sources of uncertainty is typically not made. Moreover, there are several, rather different mathematical theories that pretend to quantify uncertainty; among them are the following: probability theory; fuzzy set theory; possibility theory; evidence theory; grey set theory.
Each of these mathematical theories is built on different sets of axioms, i.e., mathematical assumptions which need not to be justied. Each theory leads to different models, different methods and different results with different interpretations for the same problem. This situation is confusing and must necessarily lead to mistakes and an inadequate handling of uncertainty.
1 The National Academies (USA) (2008), p. 20. 2 The National Academies (USA) (2008), p. 30.
A. Concepts and Denitions

The following list of concepts, methods and denitions refers to the various stations of the nuclear fuel cycle and are either directly or indirectly contained in the FQMH-I. The list shall serve as a reference guide. 1 Absorber Any material that stops ionizing radiation: -radiation is absorbed by a sheet of paper, -radiation by a few centimeters of plastic material or one centimeter of aluminium, -radiation is absorbed by high density materials (lead, steel, concrete, etc.) with sufcient thickness, neutron radiation is absorbed, for example, by boron, hafnium and cadmium, which are used in control rods in nuclear reactors. 2 Accident Any event that may result in the release of ionizing radiation exceeding the allowed limit. 3 Accreditation A process, by which an authorized body certies an organization against some ofcial standards. The accreditation process ensures that the organization is competent to test and certify third parties, e.g., testing laboratories must be certied to issue ofcial certicates of compliance with established standards. 4 Accuracy See Measurement accuracy. 5 Activation energy The energy required to initiate a reaction, such as diffusion or corrosion. 6 Age hardening Hardening of metal or alloy by aging, usually after rapid cooling or cold working (see Vukasovich (1995)). 7 Aging (ageing) Heating a material to a temperature where precipitation or ordering reactions come to completion to adjust the properties of the material. Aging treatments are rst preceded by some form of solution treatment to take all of the alloying ingredients into solution, with a possible quenching treatment to prevent precipitation during cooling (see German (2005)). 8 Alloy A solid solution or homogeneous mixture of two or more elements, at least one of which is a metal and which itself has metallic properties. 9 Alloying element The chemical substance added to a material to cause changes in its physical and chemical properties (see Tomsic (2000)). 10 Allotropy Property of certain elements (e.g, zirconium) to adopt different states with respect the crystallographic structure, i.e., the form that the atoms are bonded together. Which state is adopted depends primarily on the temperature and the pressure. 11 Alpha phase (of zirconium) The low-temperature allotrope of zirconium with a hexagonal close-packed crystal structure that occurs below the higher temperature allotrope is called beta-structure (see American Society for Testing and Materials (2007)).
12 Alpha-beta phase (of zirconium) A zirconium microstructure containing both alpha and beta structures as the principal phases at a specic temperature. 13 Alpha stabilizer (of zirconium) An alloying element in zirconium that dissolves preferentially in the alpha phase and rises the alpha-beta transformation temperature. 14 Anisotropy Condition that the properties (e.g. the E-module) of a material depend on the crystallographic direction as opposed to isotropy (see Isotropy), i.e., the properties of the material vary with the crystallographic direction1 . 15 Annealing A heat treatment associated with softening a metal or alloy, to remove residual strains, by heating to a high temperature followed by slow cooling. Cycles associated with annealing depend on the alloy, its prior history, and the desired properties. Further, the cooling cycle is often important to the properties after annealing (see German (2005)). 16 Annealing parameter A (Corrosion Studies): scaling parameter for describing the corrosion performance of Zircaloy cladding tubes. It is assumed that the corrosion performance depends on the average size of the precipitations. The growth of the precipitations after -quenching depends on the annealing temperature and annealing time. Due to annealing during manufacturing, the size of the intermetallic precipitations increases. The accumulated annealing parameter is expressed as follows (see Garzarolli et al. (1989)) where ti = annealing time in hours, Ti = temperature in K , Q = activation energy, and R = molar gas constant:
Q
Ai = ti e RTi
(A.1)
The annealing parameter serves primarily for describing the change of properties of cold-formed Zircaloy due to annealing; in particular the recrystallization performance that affect the strength (see Steinberg et al. (1984)). 17 Anodizing A coloration process that creates a surface oxide while capturing a dye to provide coloration; aluminum is the most common material subjected to an anodizing treatment. Anodizing is also used on materials that form stable oxides, such as alloys containing aluminum, titanium, zirconium, or chromium (see German (2005)). 18 Ars conjectandi The master piece of Jakob Bernoulli that was published posthumously in 1713 eight years after Jakob Bernoulli passed away. Apart from others it contains primarily the quantication of randomness by the concept probability and a measurement procedure for unknown probabilities. 19 Atomic motion The temperature dependence of the atomic motion (for example during sintering) is given by a Arrhenius type relation, by which the fraction of atoms can be calculated that have an energy greater then the activation energy. Similar relations exist for grain-boundary diffusion, surface diffusion, evaporation, creep, and other high-temperature processes. 20 Atoms for Peace An initiative signed by President Eisenhower in 1954 to enable the constructive use of atomic energy to all nations. 21 Attritor mill A high mechanical milling or grinding process that typically employs a stirred, vibrated, or tumbled container lled with small balls that collide against particles mixed with the balls (see German (2005))
1 Vollersen and Vogler (1989), p. 22.
22 Audit A planned and documented activity performed to determine by investigation, examination, or evaluation of objective evidence the adequacy of and compliance with established procedures, instructions, drawings, and other applicable documents, and the effectiveness of implementation. 23 Austenite Iron or steel having face-centered cubic (fcc) crystal structure. 24 Autoclave A closed vessel for conducting and completing either a chemical reaction under pressure and heat or other operation, such as cooling (see Davis (2000)). The corrosion tests of the cladding tubes are performed according to the relevant ASTM standard using an autoclave. Cladding tube sections are treated in the autoclave for 72 hours in steam of 400 C and subsequently the cladding tube surface is examined for contaminations. 25 Bainite Transformation product of austenite steel or iron; microstructure consisting of -ferrite with ne dispersed cementite. 26 Ball mill A simple method of deagglomerating or attritioning a powder by rolling a jar on its side, where the jar is partially lled with balls allowing the balls to fall and impact on the powder. The optimal rotation speed varies inversely with the square root of the mill diameter. For optimal milling the ball diameter should be approximately 30 times the diameter of the powder; the balls should ll about 50% of the jar volume; the input material should be lled to the extent of about 25% of the jar volume.
The input powder lls the interstitial voids between the balls. This ratio of ingredients gives a good balance between the ball mass and the number of ball contacts or impacts that give milling. It is also termed jar milling (see German (2005)). 27 Bar There are several meanings of bar (see Davis (2000)): 1. 2. 3. a section hot rolled from a zirconium billet to a form, such as round, hexagonal, octagonal, square, or rectangular, with sharp or rounded corners or edges and a cross-sectional area of less than 105 cm2 ; a solid section that is long compared to its cross-sectional dimensions, having a completely symmetrical cross section and width or greatest distance between parallel faces of 9.5 mm or more (see Log); an obsolete unit of pressure equal to 100 kPa.
28 Barn Unit of area used in nuclear physics to quantify the probability of certain interactions between particles. Symbol: barn. One barn is equal to 1028 m2 , which is about the cross-section area of a nucleus of an atom. 29 Barrier fuel cladding A thin exterior and/or interior layer to provide protection of the cladding tube wall. 30 Basal plane That plane of a hexagonal or tetragonal crystal perpendicular to the axis of highest symmetry. Its Miller indices are (001), where the Miller indices are a notation system in crystallography for planes and directions in crystal (Bravais) lattices (see Davis (2000)).
Figure A.1: Basal pole perpendicular to the basal plane.
31 Basketweave A texture that consists of alpha platelets with or without interleaved -platelets that occur in colonies in a Widmannsttten structure. The structure resembles the weave of baskets.
B.
Acronyms and Abbreviations

atomic absorption spectrometry Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control Advanced Boiling Water Reactor Advanced CANDU Reactor Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (USA) Accord Europen Relatif au Transport International des Marchandises par Route aluminium distearate ammonium diuranate auxiliary feedwater system Atomic Energy Act (USA) (United States) Atomic Energy Commission Atomnaja Electrostancija atomic emission spectrometry additive manufacturing Federal Agency for Nuclear Control (Belgium) atomic force microscopy Association Frana ise de Normalisation away from reactor atomic uorescence spectrometry Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactor (UK) Atomic Industrial Forum American Iron and Steel Institute acid leaching as low as reasonably practicable alkaline atmospheric leaching Advanced Nuclear Fuel analytical nodal method American National Standards Institute Axial Offset Anomaly Argon-Oxygen-decarburization anticipated operational occurrence average power test acceptance quality limit (former: acceptable quality level) Association for Regional and International Underground Storage American Society of Mechanical Engineers Nuclear Safety Authority (France) American Society for Testing and Materials advanced test reactor anticipated transient without scram ammonium uranyl carbonate atomic vapor laser isotope separation active zone azodicarbonamide best available technique body-centered cubic crystal structure body-centered tetragonal crystal structure beyond design basis accident
AAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ABACC . . . . . . . . . . . ABWR . . . . . . . . . . . . ACR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ACRS . . . . . . . . . . . . . ADR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ADS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ADU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ADWS . . . . . . . . . . . . AEA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . AEC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . AES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . AES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . AF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . AFCN/FANC . . . . . . AFM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . AFNOR . . . . . . . . . . . AFR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . AFS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . AGR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . AIF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . AISI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . AL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ALARP . . . . . . . . . . . ALKAL . . . . . . . . . . . ANF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ANM . . . . . . . . . . . . . ANSI . . . . . . . . . . . . . AOA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . AOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . AOO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . APT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . AQL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ARIUS . . . . . . . . . . . . ASME . . . . . . . . . . . . ASN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ASTM . . . . . . . . . . . . ATR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ATWS . . . . . . . . . . . . AUC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . AVLIS . . . . . . . . . . . . AZ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . AZB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BAT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . bcc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . bct . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BDBA . . . . . . . . . . . .
BE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BEM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BfS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BGO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BIPM . . . . . . . . . . . . . BLEU . . . . . . . . . . . . . BMU . . . . . . . . . . . . . BNFL . . . . . . . . . . . . . BNG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BNL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BOC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BORAX . . . . . . . . . . . BPRA . . . . . . . . . . . . . BROND . . . . . . . . . . . BSL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BSO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BWR . . . . . . . . . . . . . CAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CANDU . . . . . . . . . . CCD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CCTV . . . . . . . . . . . . CEA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CENDL . . . . . . . . . . . CERCER . . . . . . . . . . CERMET . . . . . . . . . CERN . . . . . . . . . . . . CFC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CFD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CFR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CGPM . . . . . . . . . . . . CHF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CILC . . . . . . . . . . . . . CIPM . . . . . . . . . . . . . CIPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CNC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CNNC . . . . . . . . . . . . CNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . COCA . . . . . . . . . . . . CODF . . . . . . . . . . . . COL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CPCI . . . . . . . . . . . . . CPR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CRGR . . . . . . . . . . . . CRUD . . . . . . . . . . . . CSN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CSR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CTBTO . . . . . . . . . . . CWG . . . . . . . . . . . . . DBA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DBT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DCP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
British Energy best estimate boundary element method Federal Ofce of Radiation Protection (Germany) beryllium-germanium-oxide Bureau International des Poids et Mesures blended low enriched uranium Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and nuclear Safety (Germany) British Nuclear Fuels Limited British Nuclear Group Brookhaven National Laboratory beginning of cycle Boiling Water Reactor Experiment burnable poison rod assembly Biblioteka Rekommendovannykh Ocenennykh Nejtronnykh Dannykh basic safety limit (UK) basic safety objective (UK) Burn-up boiling water reactor computer aided design Canada Deuterium Reactor charge coupled device closed-circuit television Commissariat LEnergie Atomique Chinese Evaluated Nuclear Data Library ceramic-ceramic fuel ceramic-metal fuel European Organization for Nuclear Research corrosion fatigue cracking computational uid dynamics Code of Federal Regulations (USA) Confrence gnrale des poids et mesures critical heat ux CRUD Induced Localized Corrosion Comit International des Poids et Mesures CRUD Induced Power Shift Commonwealth of Independent States computer numerical controlled China National Nuclear Corporation Swiss Federal Commission for Nuclear Safety Cobroyage Cadarache crystalline orientation density function combined licence (USA) Clopper-Pearson Condence Intervals critical power ratio Committee to Review Generic Requirements (USA) Chalk River Unidentied Deposits Nuclear Safety Council (Spain) contractile strain ration computed tomography Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization crush-wet grind design basis accident design basis transient dry conversion process destructive evaluation decontamination factor
DGSNR . . . . . . . . . . . DHC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DNB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DNBR . . . . . . . . . . . . DOE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DTI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . EAF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . EAF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . EBC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . EBR-I . . . . . . . . . . . . . EC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ECCS . . . . . . . . . . . . . ECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ECM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ECR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . EDF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . EDM . . . . . . . . . . . . . EFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . efpd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . EIA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ELS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . EMPA . . . . . . . . . . . . EN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ENDF . . . . . . . . . . . . . EOC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . EOL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . EPMA . . . . . . . . . . . . EPR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . EPRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . ERU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ESBWR . . . . . . . . . . . ESP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ETEC . . . . . . . . . . . . . EU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . EUP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . EURATOM . . . . . . . . FA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . fcc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . fct . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FDET . . . . . . . . . . . . . FDM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FEM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FGR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FIFA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FIMA . . . . . . . . . . . . . FLECHT . . . . . . . . . . FoEI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FORATOM . . . . . . . . FQMH . . . . . . . . . . . . FR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FSAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . FTIR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FUPSY . . . . . . . . . . . FVM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GCEP . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Directorate-General for Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection (France) delayed hydride cracking Deutsches Institut fr Normung departure from nucleate boiling departure from nucleate boiling ratio Department of Energy (USA) Department of Trade and Industry (UK) European Activation File electrical-arc furnace equivalent boron content Experimental Breeder Reactor - I European Commission emergency core cooling system Economic Commission of Europe electrochemical machining equivalent cladding reacted Electricit de France electrical discharge machining European Fusion File effective full power day Energy Information Administration (USA) extra-low tin electron microprobe analysis European norm evaluated nuclear data le end of cycle end of life (here end of irradiation) electron probe micro analysis European Pressurized Water Reactor (Europe), Evolutionary Power Reactor (US) Electric Power Research Institute enriched reprocessed uranium Economic Simplied Boiling Water Reactor early site permit (USA) Federal Department for Environment, Transport, Energy and Communication (Switzerland) European Union enriched uranium product European Atomic Energy Community fuel assembly face-centered cubic crystal structure face-centered tetragonal crystal structure Fork Detector Irradiated Fuel Measuring nite difference method nite element method ssion gas release ssion per initial ssile atom ssion per initial heavy metal atom full length emergency cooling heat transfer (of a PWR) Friends of the Earth Forum Atomique Europen Fuel Quality Management Handbook fast neutron reactor nal safety analysis report (CFR, USA) Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy fuel positioning system (AREVA) nite volume method Giga-years Gas Centrifuge Enrichment Plant
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Index
, 445 ABAQUS, 300 abrasive material, 93 absolute probe, 142 absorbed dose, 364 absorption, 263 actinide, 332, 368 actinide element, 364 actinides, 64 activated product, 332 active gamma scanner, 137 additional properties of zirconium, 70 additive, 93 ADINA, 300 ADU-procedure, 175 AEG-Telefunken, 6 aero-ball measuring system, 224 Babcock & Wilson, 6 Ahaus, 370 baddeleyite, 69 aircraft crash, 259 bafe jetting, 350 allotrope, 40 bainite, 77 allotropes of iron, 76 ball ux scanning system, 224 allotropes of zirconium, 69 barn, 62 alloying, 46 Bastnsit, 67 (, p)-reaction, 61 Beams, Jesse, 173 -particle, 61 Becquerel, Antoine Henri, 363 -phase, 55 Becquerel, Henry, 62 -stabilizer, 73 behaviour of iodine project, 313 aluminium distearate, 93, 179 bending strength, 49 americium-241, 88 bending test, 154 ammonium diurate, 66 Bergmann, Torbern Olof, 63 ammonium uranyl carbonate, 66 Bernoulli, Jakob, 301 analytic statistical approach, 296 Berthier, Pierre, 77 anisotropy, 53 Berzelius, Jns Jakob von, 68 annealing, 97 Bessemer process, 76 ANSYS, 300 -particle, 61 antisites, 45 -phase, 55 Aquarium, 5 -quenching, 75 aqueous precipitation processes, 356 -stabilizer, 73 AREVA process, 177 Bhabha, Homi, 6 Argyris, John, 300 Biblioteka Rekommendovannykh Ocenennykh NeArneb, 387 jtronnykh, 308 Arrhenius equation, 60 binary phase diagram, 55 Ars conjectandi, 302 binding energy, 61 ASIST, 308 binding energy curve, 260 assembling treatments, 114 bismuth phosphate process, 355 associated core component, 220 Association for Regional and International Under- BLEU, 201 Bloch, Ernst, 6 ground Storage, 23
ASTEC, 311 ASTM standard, 227 ATHLET-CD, 311 atomic absorption spectrometry, 151 atomic emission spectrometry, 151 atomic uorescence spectrometry, 151 atomic force microscope, 150 Atomic Industrial Forum, 30 atomic spectrometry, 151 Atomic Vapor Laser Isotope Separation, 174 Atoms for Peace, 4, 12 AUC-procedure, 175, 176 AUPuC-Procedure, 185 austenite, 77 austenitic stainless steel, 78 auxiliary material, 93 azodicarbonamide, 93, 179
bloomery, 76 body-centered, 40 BORAX I to V, 312 boric acid, 287 boron, 91 boron axid, 89 bottom end plug, 205 bottom nozzle, 207, 212 boundary element method, 300 box-shaped dummy assembly, 322 Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control, 22 brazing agent, 93 breeder reactor, 68 breeding of plutonium, 68 breeding of U-233, 65 Brookhaven National Laboratory, 262 Brookhaven Report, 259 Brown Bovery Reaktor GmbH, 6 burn-up, 317 burnable poison, 91 burst test, 153 CABRI water loop project, 313 Calder Hall, 89 calibration rod, 347 can pool sipping, 342 Candor, 4 CANDU, 92 capture, 62 Carnot, Marie Adolphe, 63 CARO-E, 309 carrier gas hot extraction, 152 Carter, Jimmy, 31, 174 cast iron, 76 casting process, 101 CASTOR, 387 Castor cask, 335 cementite, 77 centrifuge method, 11 centrifuge process, 164 ceramics, 44 checkerboard scheme, 320 chemical ionization, 151 Chernobyl accident, 7 Chicago Pile 1, 63 Chinese Evaluated Nuclear Data Library, 308 CILC, 209 CITATION, 309 cladding tube, 204 CLAPS, 308 classication of stainless steel, 78 Clough, Ray, 300 coating, 118 cobalt-base superalloys, 81 COCA-Procedure, 185 Cofn, Reuben Clare, 63 cold pressing technique, 106
cold-drawing, 105 cold-pilger technique, 104 Colenco Power Engineering, 23 Committee on Radioactive Waste Management, 366 Commonwealth of Independent States, 22 compounds and alloys of iron, 77 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, 22 compression strength, 49 computational uid dynamics, 299 computed tomography, 140 computer code, 292 condence interval, 305 conservative approach, 296 contractile strain ration, 152 control assembly, 220 control rod, 202, 220 control rod guide tube, 220 coolant, 88 coolant activity, 285 cooling process, 97 coordinate measuring machine, 133 COPERNIC3, 310 core instability, 282 core loading pattern, 320 corrosion, 56 corrosion analysis, 60 corrosion, crevice, 58 corrosion, environmentally assisted, 58 corrosion, external, 57 corrosion, galvanic, 58 corrosion, integranular, 59 corrosion, internal, 57 corrosion, nodular, 209 corrosion, pitting, 58 corrosion, uniform, 58, 209 Courant, Richard, 300 crack pattern, 352 CRAC-II report, 260 creep, 51 critical, 269 critical heat ux, 283 critical mass, 270 Crohnstedt, Axel F., 79 cross-section, 62 cruciform structure, 222 CRUD, 209 Crud deposition, 284 crystal lattice, 41 crystal lattice, close-packed, 44 crystal lattice, cubic, 41 crystal lattice, hexagonal, 42 crystal lattice, monoclinic, 43 crystal lattice, orthorhombic, 41 crystal lattice, rhombohedral, 42 crystal lattice, tetragonal, 41 crystal lattice, triclinic, 43 crystal mixture, 46, 47
crystal structures of superalloys, 81 crystallite, 45 crystals, mixed, 46 Curie, Jacques, 144 Curie, Marie, 364 Curie, Pierre, 144 cutting treatment, 109 cycle length, determination, 319 d -particle, 61 damaged spacer corner, 350 de Boer, 68 dealloying, 60 debris lter, 207 decay ratio, 282 decontamination factor, 359 deep drawing, 104 defective fuel rod, 349 defective skeleton, 349 deection vane, 213 deformation, 346 densitometer, 137 detergent, 93 determination of the reactor size, 270 deterministic approach, 295 deterministic model, 294 deuterium, 92 diabolo-form, 183 DIF3D, 309 differential probe, 142 diffusion annealing, 98 diffusion area, 272 diffusion process, 164 dislocations, line, 46 dislocations, screw, 46 dispatching to the sun, 368 dispersion fuel, 88 displacement probe, 135 distance between fuel rods, 347 distance measurement, 346 documentation, 229 Doppler effect, 267 Doppler feedback, 255 Drigg, 366 drilling, 112 drop test, 384 drop time, 348 dry bed procedure, 177 dry conversion, 174 dry conversion process, 177 dry hydrouor process, 165 dry storage, 331, 334, 369 dual-purpose system, 369 ductile, 50 ductility, 50 Duplex conception, 211 duplex stainless steel, 79 dye penetrant inspection, 132
E110 material, 75 E125 material, 75 E 110 material, 74 earthquake, 257 eddy current inspection, 140 eddy current method, 344 edge bending, 103 Edison Electric Institute, 30 effective multiplication factor, 269 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 4, 26 elastic limit, 49 elastic scattering, 62 elasticity, 48 elasticity modulus, 48 Electric Power Research Institute, 30 electrical discharge machining, 110 electrochemical machining, 109 electrochemistry of corrosion, 60 electron, 61 electron beam welding, 117 electron impact method, 151 electron microprobe analysis, 150 electronspray ionization, 151 electrorening process, 358 electrorening reprocessing, 358 empirical model, 244 ENBF/B le, 262 enrichment, 10, 284 enrichment, determination, 319 environmental hazard, 362 equivalent dose, 364 erosion corrosion, 60 ERU, 201 Euler angles, 53 EURATOM Supply Agency, 22, 28 EURATOM Treaty, 22 European (Evolutionary) Power Reactor (EPR), 18 European Activation File, 308 European Agreement Concerning the International Carriage of Dangerous Good by Road, 378 European Atomic Energy Community, 22, 28 European Economic Community, 28 European Fusion File, 308 European Nuclear Society, 23 European Organization for Nuclear Research, 22 Evaluated Nuclear Data File, 262, 308 evaluation and reporting, 237 excepted package, 378 Experimental Breeder Reactor-1, 312 external spring, 206 EXXON Nuclear, 16 face-centered, 41 Faraday, Michael, 79 fast atom bombardment, 151 fast ssion factor, 266 fast non-leakage probability, 269 FDET system, 346

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NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

Elart von Collani

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

A Birds-Eye View on Nuclear Technology

Technical and Physical Fundamentals

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

Manufacturing of Nuclear Fuel

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

10 Front End Inspections

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

Nuclear Waste and Storage

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

A Concepts and Denitions B Acronyms and Abbreviations

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

A Birds-Eye View on Nuclear Technology

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

1. The Dawn of Nuclear Energy

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

Quality Management of Nuclear Installations

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

The Nuclear Fuel Cycle

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

Mining and Milling

Conversion and Enrichment

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

S-50 Thermal Diffusion

Y-12 Beta Calutrons

K-25 Gaseous Diffusion

Y-12 Alpha Calutrons

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

Producing Electric Energy

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

Figure 1.9: Storage pond37 for spent fuel at a UK reprocessing plan.

37 http://www.world-nuclear.org/education/wast.htm, November, 2008.

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

Generations of Nuclear Reactors

First Generation Reactors

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

Second Generation Reactors

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

second established the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or EURATOM).

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010

The International Systems of Units

NUCLEAR FUEL QUALITY MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK VOLUME I 2010