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SAFETY AND SECURITY EASTERN LIBYAN FORCES have located 10 drums of uranium declared missing by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). They were had found near the warehouse from which they disappeared in southern Libya. Khaled Mahjoub, head of a media unit for the Libyan National Army, the main military force in eastern Libya, said the barrels had been recovered.


AN INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC Energy Agency (IAEA) Integrated Safety Assessment for Research Reactors (INSARR) team said Belgium had strengthened safety at its BR2 research reactor but also found the need for further safety enhancements.


JAPAN’S NUCLEAR REGULATION Authority (NRA) has said there are no active faults underneath Hokuriku Electric Power Company’s Shika NPP, contrary to a previous view presented by an NRA expert panel in 2016. NRA generally accepted Hokuriku Electric’s view that none of the faults are active.


ADVANCED REACTORS TSKBM (PART OF Rosatom) has shipped a prototype of the main circulation pump unit for the Brest-OD-300 reactor under construction at the Siberian Chemical Combine (SCC) in Seversk. Serial pumps manufactured according to this prototype will pump molten lead as coolant in the primary circuit of the reactor plant.


SWEDISH COMPANY LEADCOLD has launched a feasibility study to investigate the conditions for building a nuclear research reactor at Studsvik with associated fuel fabrication infrastructure. The project would be based on LeadCold’s SEALER (Swedish Advanced Lead Reactor) – a small modular lead cooled fast breeder reactor.


FRANCE’S ALTERNATIVE ENERGIES & Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) has launched two start-ups - Hexana and Stellaria. They will rely on CEA’s technologies and patents to develop fourth generation advanced modular reactors.


PLANT OPERATION UNIT 2 OF Taiwan’s Kuosheng NPP has been closed in preparation for decommissioning in accordance with Taiwan’s nuclear phase-out policy after its 40-year operating licence expired. Construction of Kuosheng 2, a 985 MWe boiling water reactor, began in 1976 and it began commercial operation in 1983.


ATF makes progress


an approximate 2% increase in fissile material, compared with conventional UO2


products.


ADOPT fuel is also expected to provide additional safety benefits in terms of fuel fragmentation, relocation, and dispersal in an event such as a loss-of-coolant accident. Meanwhile, Russian ATF is undergoing a


Above: ADOPT fuel pellets have received NRC approval


Westinghouse Electric Company has received approval from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to use its Advanced Doped Pellet Technology (ADOPT) fuel pellets in US pressurised water reactors (PWRs). The approval came after both NRC and the Advanced Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) verified that ADOPT fuel significantly enhances the safety and reliability of PWRs. The technology was developed with funding


from the US Department of Energy (DOE) with the aim of increasing the accident tolerance of conventional uranium dioxide fuel pellets. An agreement was announced in 2022 with Southern Nuclear Company to load rods using High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU) ADOPT pellets “with licensing and manufacturing in 2023”. Westinghouse said it is contracted to deliver reload quantities of ADOPT fuel for three units beginning in 2025. ADOPT fuel is a near-term fuel product within


the EnCore Fuel programme and is an improved uranium dioxide (UO2


amounts of chromium and aluminium oxides (Cr2


O3 and Al2 O3 ). By utilising a small amount of


aluminium, Westinghouse has been able to keep the amount of chromium (a parasitic neutron absorber) to a minimum, thereby improving neutron efficiency. ADOPT fuel can be used in all Westinghouse and Combustion Engineering PWR and boiling water reactor (BWR) designs Westinghouse says the ADOPT pellet design achieves greater uranium efficiency through


China ACP100 SMR build progress China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) says construction has been completed of the main internal structure for the reactor building at the ACP-100 small modular reactor (SMR) demonstration project at the Changjiang NPP in Hainan Province. The multi-purpose, 125 MWe SMR (also known as Linglong One) is a pressurised water reactor designed for electricity generation, urban heating, urban cooling, industrial steam production, or seawater desalination. CNNC said pouring concrete for the wall


panels more than seven metres above the internal structure of the reactor building “has


8 | April 2023 | www.neimagazine.com ) design, doped with small


second cycle of trial operation at unit 2 of the Rostov NPP. In 2021, three combined TVS-2M fuel assemblies were loaded into the reactor core for the first round of testing. Each contained 12 fuel rods. Six were made using chromium-nickel alloy 42KhNM as a structural material and six with claddings made of zirconium alloy with a chromium coating. This design aims to eliminate or significantly slow down the development of the zirconium vapour reaction in the reactor core in the event of an emergency. Alexander Ugryumov, Senior Vice President


for Scientific & Technical Activities at Rosatom’s Fuel Company TVEL, explained: “In 2023, at the Chepetsk Mechanical Plant in Glazov, a pilot plant for applying chromium coatings to claddings made of a traditional zirconium alloy will be installed. While fuel assemblies with experimental fuel rods of ‘tolerant’ design will continue the test programme at the Rostov NPP, we will begin to manufacture fuel rods with chromium-plated cladding in a quantity sufficient for several complete fuel assemblies. Their operation in a high-power power reactor will be the next, and final, a step towards the qualification, commercialisation and widespread introduction of Russian ATF fuel,” he said At the same time, the Research Institute


of Atomic Reactors (NIIAR) in Dimitrovgrad is undertaking a large-scale programme to test a wide range of different fuel cladding materials and ATF fuel in the MIR research reactor. Reactor tests of new fuel elements with uranium- silicide fuel for VVER and other pressurised water reactors has begun. TVEL is the main organisation working on the development in co-operation with the AA Bochvar Research Institute of Inorganic Materials (VNIINM). ■


created good conditions for the subsequent commissioning of the main equipment and for lifting the steel upper part of the protective shell”. Compared with traditional nuclear technology, the outstanding features of the ACP-100 are its “compactness, modularity, and integral design”, CNNC noted. “The main body is placed in a steel protective shell, and the total thickness of the concrete floor is more than 7.5 metres. It has dense steel rods and many pre-installed elements, a small spatial structure and other characteristics, making its design extremely complex.” CNNC began development of Linglong One in


2010, and it was the first SMR project to pass an independent safety assessment by the IAEA U


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