SIEL: Heavy Water Inventory System

Abstract

Heavy water is a very expensive resource and is also a prescribed material according to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC). Since the commissioning of the CANDU-6 PHWR at Gentilly-2 in 1983, extensive efforts have been deployed to achieve effective and accurate heavy water management. Unfortunately, the tools available and the methods used in the beginning resulted in considerable uncertainties in the heavy water inventory after only a few months of operation. Since that time, improving heavy water management has always been a constant challenge and a goal. For these reasons, we developed an efficient, practical and modem new tool. SIEL is the result of the combination of all those experiences, successes, and failures acquired at G-2 over the years in D20 management, and of the new technologies now available. The main purpose of SIEL is to easily track the heavy water inventory and losses on a daily basis.