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Sci Tech
Co-location of fuel reprocessing, refabrication
R. PRASAD
The FRFCF will fabricate fuel for the two reactors to come up at IGCAR Co-located facility will ensure safety and security
The mixed oxide fuel for the upcoming Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) and two more new fast breeder reactors to come up at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), Kalpakkam, will be produced within the IGCAR premises. The Fast Reactor Fuel Cycle Facility (FRFCF) to produce the refabricated fuel for the prototype reactor is at its pre-project stage.
The FRFCF, in addition to producing the mixed oxide fuel, will also reprocess the spent fuel coming out of the reactors. This reprocessed fuel will ultimately be refabricated and put back into the reactors.
By April 2009
Dr. Baldev Raj, Director of IGCAR expects the sanction for the facility to come through by April next year. The Rs.2,500 crore facility will be ready for commercial use by 2012.
“The idea is to have the reprocessing, refabrication, and making the sub-assemblies (of the fuel pins) co-located within the reactor site,” said Dr. Raj. “Having it co-located is important from the safety and security point of view; and also of economics.” In the absence of this facility, fuel for the PFBR and two other fast breeder reactors to come up at Kalpakkam will have to be fabricated at BARC and transported all the way from Mumbai.
The focus
Since the focus is on co-location of the fuel fabrication, reprocessing and refabrication facility with the reactors, the other two fast breeder reactors to come up elsewhere in the country by 2020 will have similar co-located facilities.
“It is an ideology to have fuel fabrication co-located wherever the reactor is,” he noted.
Since the FRFCF is expected to be operational only by 2012, two years after the PFBR goes critical, the fuel for the first two cores would be fabricated by the Advanced Fuel Fabrication Facility (AFFF) at BARC, Mumbai. This is because changing the fuel in the core, called a campaign, needs to be done once in 8 months in the case of the PFBR.
Hence the facility coming up at Kalpakkam will only refabricate the reprocessed fuel for PFBR. However, it would be able to fabricate the fuel for the two new reactors coming up within the same premises at Kalpakkam.
More demanding
“The technology to refabricate a plutonium based fuel is much more demanding and challenging,” said Dr. Raj, “as it [the fuel] will still have some radioactivity.”
The FRFCF facility, according to him, will be much more complex and sophisticated compared with the Hyderabad based Nuclear Fuel Complex.It may be remembered that the mixed carbide fuel for the FBTR was fabricated by the BARC facility and not the NFC, Hyderabad. Scientists at IGCAR already have some experience refabricating mixed oxide fuel on a pilot scale. A demonstration fuel reprocessing plant is expected to be ready by 2010.
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