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round up
NEW BUILD PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY of Ukraine has signed the law on the procurement of equipment for the completion of units 3&4 at the Khmelnitsky NPP. The law establishes the legal framework and grants permission for the procurement of equipment from the Bulgarian Belene NPP. In February, Ukraine’s parliament passed a law allowing nuclear utility Energoatom to buy two Soviet-designed reactor pressure vessels from Bulgaria’s cancelled project.
NINE CONTRACTS HAVE been signed for the construction of units 1&2 of China’s Bailong NPP in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, according to the Shanghai Nuclear Engineering Research & Design Institute (SNERDI). The contracts were awarded by Guangxi Nuclear Power Company Ltd to SNERDI, both subsidiaries of the State Power Investment Corporation.
RUSSIA’S FEDERAL ENVIRONMENTAL, Technological & Nuclear Surveillance Service (Rostekhnadzor) has issued a licence to Rosenergoatom approving the installation of a VVER-Toi reactor at unit 4 of the Kursk-II NPP. Obtaining a licence confirms the project’s compliance with Russian norms and rules and indicates the site’s readiness to host a nuclear facility.
THE CYLINDRICAL STEEL lining module 3 has been installed at unit 5 of China’s Ningde NPP in Fujian Province. After a series of manoeuvres, the module was in place, China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) subsidiary China Nuclear Power Engineering Company said. Ningde NPP was the first nuclear plant to be built and put into operation in Fujian Province.
PLANT OPERATION TOKYO ELECTRIC POWER Company Holdings (Tepco) said it plans to restart a reactor at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa NPP in Niigata Prefecture in the fiscal year 2025. According to changes made to Tepco’s business plan, approved by the government the same day, the restart is expected to boost its earnings by around JPY100bn ($672m) a year.
EQUIPMENT RUSSIA’S RES ENGINEERING has shipped the first batches of the regulatory valves to China’s Tianwan and Xudabao NPPs. A total of 34 pieces of equipment were delivered. Some of the parts ware manufactured by India’s Dembla Valves Limited and final assembly was carried out at JSC Energomash Chekhov Power Engineering Plant.
INL tests safety of high burnup fast reactor fuel
Above: The INL TREAT facility used to test the high burnup fuel
Idaho National Laboratory (INL) had conducted safety tests on a high burnup fast reactor fuel at its Transient Reactor Test (TREAT) facility. The test, the first of its kind in more than 20 years, is part of a collaboration to develop and qualify fuels for fast reactors between the US Department of Energy (DOE) and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA). Several additional safety tests are planned over the next few years. The researchers performed transient tests on a high-burnup metallic fuel that was archived from historic irradiation testing at INL’s EBR-II reactor. A new test capsule specifically designed to test fast reactor fuels was used that is equipped with a variety of sensors to monitor fuel behaviour during testing. INL said the safety tests will provide crucial new data to support future fuel development and qualification. “The main ambition of this initiative is to
test fast reactor fuels in their weakest state to better understand their limits and inform the development of improved designs,” said Colby Jensen, INL Technical Lead for Transient Testing, who added: “Fast reactor fuel designs in the United States have not made a major leap forward since the era when the EBR-II programme was shut down, and so the data from these tests of legacy fuel is highly valuable for advanced fuel designers today.” EBR-II was a 62.5 MWt/20 MWe
demonstration liquid-sodium cooled, fast breeder reactor used to test fuels and materials. It was shut down after 30 years of operations and has since been decommissioned. However, its containment structure is being repurposed to house the National Reactor Innovation Center’s DOME test bed facility. The DOE/JAEA safety tests are part of a
five-year cost-shared facility sharing initiative under the Civil Nuclear Energy Research &
6 | April 2025 |
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Development Working Group. They are testing a mixed oxide fuel used by current Japanese fast reactor designs and a metallic alloy fuel under development in the US and of interest to Japan. DOE and JAEA previously performed similar tests on high-burnup fast reactor fuel in the late 80s before EBR-II was shutdown. TREAT, which was launched in 1959, was placed on standby in 1994. TREAT restarted in 2017 under the first Trump Administration to support the development and qualification testing of new fuels. It is one of the few test reactors in the world that can perform transient tests, which produces short duration power cycles. These may be more than 10 times higher than a commercial power plant and help to determine the safety limits of nuclear fuel. Post-irradiation examination work will be
performed at INL’s Hot Fuel Examination Facility and Irradiated Materials Characterisation Laboratory, where researchers will use state- of-the-art analytical capabilities to examine the test specimens down to the microstructural level. The initial project experiments are expected to be completed later this year with planning for additional testing already underway. INL’s capsule also brings new testing
capabilities to TREAT that will help advance fuel performance research for sodium-cooled fast reactors. “Execution of these unique experiments is an important step toward developing global confidence in the enhanced performance and safety of advanced nuclear reactor technologies,” said Dr Daniel Wachs, the national technical director for the US Advanced Fuels Campaign. “It’s also a remarkable example of how critical international collaborations will enable the next generation of energy technology development.” TREAT is one of just a handful of reactors in the world designed specifically to bring nuclear fuels to failure in a controlled environment. The test reactor produces sudden bursts of energy, known as transients, that are five times more powerful than a commercial power plant. Although TREAT was originally constructed
to test fast-reactor fuels, its flexible design has also enabled its use for testing of light-water- reactor fuels as well as other exotic special- purpose fuels, such as space reactors. TREAT has an open-core design that allows for ease of experiment instrumentation and real-time imaging of fuel motion during irradiation, which also makes TREAT an ideal platform for understanding the irradiation response of materials and fuels on a fundamental level. ■
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