LESSONS-LEARNED AND EXPERIENCE FROM 40 YEARS OF MOX FUEL PRODUCTION FOR THE FUTURE DESIGN OF A NEW FACILITY

Michel Pibarot AtomEco-2011 November 1st, 2011

Introduction
Preamble MOX fuel production
Production at the Cadarache and MELOX facilities

MOX manufacturing process Lessons-learned

Areas of improvement resulting from experience and lessons-learned

Research and development for MOX equipment MOX facility projects for foreign clients Conclusion

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PREAMBLE The recycling option with MOX fuel production

Recovers reusable materials with very high energy potential and ensures major savings of natural uranium through the use of MOX and ERU fuel
reducing natural uranium consumption until 25%

Reduces spent fuel quantities: 8 UOX 1 MOX

it is definitely easier to manage 1 used MOX fuel instead of 8 used UO2 fuel for the same amount of energy produced

Limits accumulation of a huge stock of used fuel and diminishes the quantity (by a factor of about 5) and toxicity (by a factor of 10 ) of high-level nuclear waste Allows this generation to make progress to avoid leaving nuclear waste totally to the next generation Provides public and market confidence that used fuel is being actually managed
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MOX Fuel Production in France

MOX fuel stands for Mixed uranium and plutonium Oxides for Fast Breeder Reactors (FBR) and Light Water Reactors (LWR)

Production at the Cadarache and MELOX facilities

Cadarache plutonium recycling facility from 1964 to 2004 MELOX facility from 1995 to present
Flexible MOX facility

FBR MOX fuel Cadarache facility LWR MOX fuel

LWR MOX fuel

MELOX facility

1964

1991

1995

2000

2004

2011

FBR MOX fuel produced: 112 tHM (Cadarache facility) LWR MOX fuel produced: 2047 tHM (Cadarache and MELOX facilities)
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LWR MOX Fuel

Production
Facility
Reactor Period of production Number of assemblies Tons (Heavy Metal) PWR 1991-2004 715 347

LWR MOX fuel

Cadarache MELOX
PWR and BWR 1995-2010 3340 1700

Total

2047 tHM

Customers: Fuel vendors and end-users

The Fuel Vendor (FV) is responsible for fuel assembly design and serves as liaison between the manufacturer and end-user (utility) MOX fuel vendors: AREVA NP, NFI, MHI/MNF, GNF-J LWR MOX fuel end-users: EDF, CEA, E.ON, RWE, NOK, Kansai Electric, TEPCO, Chubu Electric, Duke Power, etc.

LWR MOX fuel designs manufactured

PWR: 14x14, 16x16, 17x17, 18x18 BWR: 8x8, 9x9, 10x10
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FBR MOX Fuel

Production
FBR MOX fuel
Facility
Reactor Period of production Number of assemblies Tons (Heavy Metal) RAPSODIE 1969-1982 611 1,2

Cadarache
Phnix Super Phnix 1971-2000 986 38,5 1979-1991 766 71 1,6 PFR 1987-1990

Total

112 tHM

Fuel designs manufactured

Reactor Assembly height Assembly weight RAPSODIE 1,66 m 15 kg Phnix Super Phnix 4,3 m 200 kg 5,4 m 590 kg

Flexibility of the facility: it is feasible and it is vital to be flexible for a MOX fuel facility to produce FBR and/or LWR fuel
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MELOX LWR MOX Fuel Production

MELOX startup and production
1995-1997: start up of the MELOX facility reaching nominal throughput (100tHM/y) within 3 years 2003-2005: new licensed threshold (145tHM/y) reached within 3 years 2007-2010: multi-design fuel production for French, German and Japanese customers
200 180 160 140

tHM/y

120 100 80 60 40 20 0
1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

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MOX Manufacturing Process

MOX production is a highly automated process
Operators carry out the operations remotely from control rooms All operations (powder preparation, pellet and rod manufacturing) are performed in glove boxes

Proper equipment design in glove boxes relative to operability, reliability and maintainability are key drivers for production line efficiency

MOX process
Four principal phases: powder preparation, pellet manufacturing, rod cladding and assembling The powder preparation (UO2 + PuO2 + recycled product) is prepared in two steps for the LWR MOX process and one step for the FBR MOX process

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AREVA MOX Manufacturing Process

Secondary blend only for LWR MOX production

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Lessons-Learned: Key Points

Strong collaboration between the manufacturing facility operator and plant designer enables continuous design improvement as well as proper maintenance of engineering specifications Improvements apply more to the main equipment environments than to the main equipment itself (i.e., press, furnace) The organization of the facility is critical for efficient traceability and management of change requests received from maintenance and manufacturing (e.g., TPM organization) For proper implementation of continuous improvement, engineering must manage the supply chain Equipment and process modifications cannot be implemented in the facility without first being tested in a dedicated R&D laboratorysuccess requires careful attention to details (The Devil is in the details)

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Areas of improvement resulting from experience and lessons-learned

1 - Safety and security
A thorough knowledge of powder performance optimizes the assumptions made for the criticality studies (e.g., safety demonstration of a
secondary blend homogenizer containing more than 70kg of Pu)

Radiation worker protection management and contamination monitoring equipment Safeguards system with continuous inventory verification

2 - Manufacturing process
Press: powder feeding, operating parameters, mechanical improvements, maintainability and dose reduction Laboratory design for industrial efficiency with commercial standard analyzers modified for use in a nuclear environment Fully automated rod handling, control and storage equipment Automated rod scanner inspection device (i.e., verification of pellet
homogeneity, Pu concentration, presence of gaps, etc.)

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Areas of improvements resulting from experience and lessons-learned

3 - Plant architecture and layout
Optimized architecture and layout accounting for conflicting constraints regarding overall investment and safety, production capacity, maintenance operations, future dismantling and decommissioning Required equipment redundancies and space available for potential future changes Buffer storage locations (e.g., powder units) and capacities adjusted to Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) of process units (nota: difficulties to assess OEE of mechanical equipment located inside glove boxes and powder environment) Ventilation system design and gas purging of glove boxes Balance of plant (utilities) and support facilities (maintenance areas, tool repair and waste sorting and packaging, etc.)

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Lessons-Learned: MOX facility architecture

Cadarache MOX fuel facility

MELOX MOX fuel facility

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Areas of improvements resulting from experience and lessons-learned

4 - Material quality and production management
Computerized Production Management System (plant brain): software for nuclear material management (i.e., surveillance, tracking) and product conformity which guaranties product quality for the customer (i.e., traceability)

5 - Primary drivers for proven equipment design and sizing

Industrial equipment lifetime: proper balance regarding corrective, preventative and predictive maintenance (e.g., ball milling) Lot size: large powder batch size increasing the net powder capacity
(e.g., lot size: 50kg at Cadarache facility and 700kg at MELOX)

Robustness of the process qualification and optimization of the quantity of laboratory analysis (e.g., milling, cladding) Maintainability, leak tightness and dust recovering for ALARA dose reduction (e.g., presses, grinding machine)

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Areas of improvements resulting from experience and lessons-learned

6 - Glove box design
Shell frame instead of previous frame type design, improved for assembly, operability and future decommissioning requirements, seismic calculation, maintenance access, reduction of potential material retention, cleaning, etc.

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Areas of improvements resulting from experience and lessons-learned

7 - Standard equipment
Gloves (optimization of material with respect to the cost, mechanical quality performance and work station requirements) and special shielding Glove box equipment with proven devices (fire detection, adequate
uniform lighting, multiplexer, power transmission)

Modified standard equipment (e.g., dust recovery equipped with self

cleaning filters by periodic blowback with nitrogen, powder transfer devices with leak tightness)

Incorporation of robotic technology inside glove boxes for handling pellets (maintainability and availability of complex devices in a glove
box environment)

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Research and Development for MOX equipment

Applied Development Centre
Develop and validate improvements in MOX fuel fabrication technologies on an industrial scale Certify new production equipment suppliers Perform testing on mechanical equipment before its introduction into industrial service Perform engineering tests

Cold welding shop

Prepare certification testing for welding of MOX rods Validate welding prototypes Provide technology intelligence and prepare for process upgrades

Test Line
Adjust industrial parameters before MOX commercial campaigns Test experimental development programs on MOX products or processes

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MOX facility projects for foreign clients

MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) in the US
This MOX facility is being designed and constructed in response to the START agreement to use surplus weapon-grade plutonium MFFF facility is based on MELOX design and technology Construction was started in August 2007 on the US Department of Energy (DOE) Savannah River Site

MOX fuel fabrication facility in Japan (JMOX)

AREVA supported JNFL for the basic design of the MOX fuel facility on the Rokkasho-Mura reprocessing site through a Technical Service Agreement

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Conclusion
The concept for a new MOX fuel facility involves:
Proven technology kept continuously up-to-date through R&D and lessons-learned Implementation of lessons-learned regarding operating in confined environments while maintaining industrial efficiency

We can take maximum advantage of our 40 years of experience by means of:

An existing sizeable reference library from multiple MOX fuel manufacturing facilities Facility staff knowledge and work culture contributing to the development of MOX through continuous improvement Centralized engineering department responsible for updating standards and specifications R&D laboratories that are located near the manufacturing facility, fully involved in MOX fuel manufacturing improvements

This critical background provides essential expertise for the future advanced FBR and LWR MOX fuel facility

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