Overview of the CANDU Fuel Handling System for Advanced Fuel Cycles

Abstract

Because of its neutron economies and on-power re-fuelling capabilities the CANDU system is ideally suited for implementing advanced fuel cycles because it can be adapted to bum these alternative fuels without major changes to the reactor. The fuel handling system is adaptable to implement advanced fuel cycles with some minor changes. Each individual advanced fuel cycle imposes some new set of special requirements on the fuel handling system that is different from the requirements usually encountered in handling the traditional natural uranium fuel. These changes are minor from an overall plant point of view but will require some interesting design and operating changes to the fuel handling system. Some preliminary conceptual design has been done on the fuel handling system in support of these fuel cycles. Some fuel handling details were studied in depth for some of the advanced fuel cycles. This paper provides an overview of the concepts and design challenges.