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Division Spotlight
Robotics & Remote Systems
The Mission of the Robotics and Remote Systems Division is to promote the development and application of immersive simulation, robotics, and remote systems for hazardous environments for the purpose of reducing hazardous exposure to individuals, reducing environmental hazards and reducing the cost of performing work.
Meeting Spotlight
Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo (UWC 2024)
August 4–7, 2024
Marco Island, FL|JW Marriott Marco Island
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Latest News
Constellation seeks rezone for property adjacent to Illinois plant
While no development details have been released, Constellation is asking to rezone 658.8 acres of land it owns around the Byron nuclear plant in Illinois for possible long-term use.
Pierre Saunier (CEA), Franck Peysson, Denis Etienne (BOUYGUES Construction), Vincent Le Talbodec, Laurent Dufrene (CNIM)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 667-674
The French Generation IV sodium cooled Fast Reactor (SFR) is designed with a large pool-type vessel and equipment (pumps, heat decay removal) which are sensitive to horizontal seismic accelerations. It is necessary to design these components with an appropriate seismic isolation system depending on the site seismic conditions.
For ASTRID, the SFR industrial demonstrator project under development by the CEA, the preliminary study has concluded to the necessity to isolate horizontally all the buildings of the nuclear island on a para-seismic raft equipped with seismic pads. At the current Basic Design phase, the project takes into account the lessons learnt from the recent Jules Horowitz Reactor (JHR) and ITER research reactor projects under construction and equipped with seismic isolators.
Seismic isolation allows to decrease the horizontal building accelerations from 5 to 10 times. Positive aspects consist in reducing the average reinforcement ratio of these buildings and to ease the design of the main reactor block components, with in the end, an expected gain of cost.
ASTRID partners aims also to improve and innovate with this isolation technology. Based on the European standards, previous solutions used elastomeric rubber with metallic parts pads. BOUYGUES Company (CEA’s partner for ASTRID), associated to CNIM Company, has chosen to change the raw material, using polyurethane material instead of natural rubber. Several advantages are expected. With ageing, the polyurethane is softening whereas natural rubber is hardening (and potentially reducing seismic isolation capacity).
The main conclusion is that these new pads respect the dynamic behavior of the buildings, give better margin in seismic condition and allow modifying easily the pads stiffness.
The next step is that a complete qualification program will be implemented in order to validate the one scale dynamic characteristics of the isolators at full scale and to justify the requested 90 years lifetime.