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Swiss nuclear power and the case for long-term operation
Designed for 40 years but built to last far longer, Switzerland’s nuclear power plants have all entered long-term operation. Yet age alone says little about safety or performance. Through continuous upgrades, strict regulatory oversight, and extensive aging management, the country’s reactors are being prepared for decades of continued operation, in line with international practice.
H.A. Boniface, N.V. Gnanapragasam, D.K. Ryland, S. Suppiah, I. Castillo
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 67 | Number 2 | March 2015 | Pages 258-261
Proceedings of TRITIUM 2013 | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-T5
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
There is a potential interest at CRL to detritiate moderately tritiated light water and to reclaim tritiated, downgraded heavy water. With only a few limitations, a single CECE process configuration can be designed to remove tritium from heavy water or light water and upgrade heavy water. Such a design would have some restrictions on the nature of the feed-stock and tritium product, but could produce essentially tritium-free light or heavy water that is chemically pure. The extracted tritium is produced as a small quantity of tritiated heavy water. The overall plant capacity is fixed by the total amount of electrolysis and volume of catalyst. In this proposal, with 60 kA of electrolysis a throughput of 15 kg·h−1 light water for detritiation, about 4 kg·h−1 of heavy water for detritiation and about 27 kg·h−1 of 98% heavy water for upgrading can be processed. Such a plant requires about 1,000 L of AECL isotope exchange catalyst. The general design features and details of this multi-purpose CECE process are described in this paper, based on some practical choices of design criteria. In addition, we outline the small differences that must be accommodated and some compromises that must be made to make the plant capable of such flexible operation.