BARC develops spent fuel automation system for nuclear plants

In a one of its kind feature, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) has designed and developed an advanced automation system for the transfer of spent fuel bundles of pressuired heavy water reactors for nulcear reprocessing plants.

The spent fuel bundles are stored in an array of trays from ease of handling consideration and currently the spent fuels from storage pool are transferred to the reprocessing plant manually which includes the lowering of cask, transfer of fuel bundles (11 bundles weighing about 200 kg) from the storage tray to the charging cask using manually operated single or multiple underwater gripper assembly.

[caption id="attachment_86432" align="alignleft" width="380" caption="BARC develops a one of its kind feature (Reuters)"][/caption]

The fuel bundles are pushed (total pushing stroke of about 7m) manually in stages one after the other after lifting of cask out of the pool and its alignment to shielded transfer port of the chopper cell.

"This operation requires dependency and availability of trained and skilled manpower. During the handling of fuel bundles from pool to the chopper unit (through charging cask) also results sometimes in spillage of contaminated water all around on the floor and this new automated system could solve many of these problems being faced in the current system of manual operation," Singh added.

More from Fwire

PTI