Fuel Channel Maintenance Future Directions

Abstract

From the point of view of a new fuel channel design, the opportunities for improving fuel channel maintenance procedures are considerable. By careful attention to design simplification and provision of maintenance oriented features, the maintainability of channels is improved while at the same time reducing overall operating costs and man rem expenditure. Future practice in fuel channel replacement can capitalize on these improvements by thorough and realistic simulation of active reactor retubing tasks. Special attention will need to be paid to maximizing the efficiency of manual tasks through extensive training.