Status Report About CANDU Type Fuel Activities in Argentina

Abstract

Domestic fuel performance in Embalse NPP during the last two years has been excellent without a significant occurrence of fuel failures. The defect rate level was reasonably low with a lowest value of 0.02% in 2002. The implementation of fuel design optimizations to increase U content was fully completed by the end of year 2000. The in-reactor performance was not affected and shows the high degree of maturity reached for both, the design and the manufacturing procedures and capabilities. A feasibility study for the utilization of SEU in Embalse NPP mainly conducted by NA-SA and AECL is almost completed. Some fuel related activities are still in progress. As part of them fuel behavior simulations using simplified power histories were performed to assess the influence of SEU fuel burnup extension.