Qinshan CANDU 6 Main Heat Transport System High Operational Performance

Abstract

This paper deals with the Qinshan CANDU® 6 Critical Channel Power (CCP) performance up to about 6 years of operation. Operational and aging related changes of the primary Heat Transport System (HTS) throughout its lifetime may lead to restrictions in certain safety system settings and hence some restriction in performance under certain conditions. A step in confirming safe reactor operation is the tracking of relevant data and their corresponding interpretation by the use of appropriate thermalhydraulic analytic models. Based on these analytic models up to 10 years of reactor operation are predicted and presented. These predictions, in association with an optimized parameter tracking and adjustment methodology, confirm continued safe reactor operation. This paper demonstrates that Qinshan CANDU Units 1 and 2, as compared to other CANDU 6 nuclear reactors of earlier design, exhibit significantly improved performance with much reduced plant aging effects. This high performance may, in part, be attributed to design improvements as well as improved operating practices. These performance improvements can also be expected for both new and refurbished CANDU 6 type nuclear reactors.