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Nuclear new build procurement considerations
It may seem counterintuitive, but the best time to enhance the ability to support operations and maintenance for a new plant is before construction starts. This is one of many lessons learned by the currently operating nuclear fleet. As construction and startup of many nuclear facilities was completed, it quickly became evident that the ability to efficiently support operations and maintenance was limited. Most of the information necessary to establish and manage procurement of spare and replacement items, maintenance, and configuration of the facilities was unavailable and had to be gathered on a case-by-case, “on-demand” basis. Absence of necessary information and the associated challenges resulted in the need for staff augmentation and multiyear-long projects to develop equipment bills of material and maintenance programs and to perform technical evaluations for the huge quantities of spare and replacement items being requested.
Yong-Qian Shi, Pu Xia, Zhang-Lin Luo, Zhi-Xiang Zhao, Dazhao Ding, Yi-Guo Li, Qin-Fu Zhu, Hai-Hong Xia, Ji-Gen Li, Wei Zhang, Jian Cao, Yan-Hui Quan, Huang-Da Luo, Xiaofei Wu
Nuclear Technology | Volume 159 | Number 1 | July 2007 | Pages 106-118
Technical Paper | Accelerators | doi.org/10.13182/NT07-A3858
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The paper presents the design objectives and structure of China's accelerator-driven subcritical system subcritical assembly Venus-1. The core of Venus-1 is a coupled core with a fast neutron zone and a thermal neutron zone. The fast neutron zone is at the center of the core and is formed by natural uranium fuel. A fast neutron spectrum field can be produced in the fast neutron zone and used for transmutation. The thermal neutron zone surrounds the fast neutron zone and is formed by low-enriched uranium fuel; it is a fission zone. Venus-1 is driven by an Am-Be or other steady neutron source (252Cf, D-D reaction or D-T reaction) to research the effect of an external neutron source with different energies on it or is driven by a D-T pulsed neutron source through the China Institute of Atomic Energy pulsed neutron generator to research the dynamic characteristic. On July 18, 2005, the first fuel element was loaded into the Venus-1 subcritical assembly, and some preliminary experiments on subcritical and neutron distribution have been performed. The final load has been determined by preliminary experiments on Venus-1. The relative neutron importance of the external source, the relative distribution of the thermal neutron flux in the fast neutron zone, and the variation of the neutron count with the addition of natural uranium fuel also have been determined by preliminary experiments on Venus-1.