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Fuel loading process begins at Palisades
The Palisades nuclear power plant has drawn closer to restart, as plant staff began the process of loading fuel into the reactor vessel on Sunday morning.
The commencement of fuel loading places the Covert, Mich., facility in Mode 6—or the refueling stage—under the plant’s technical specifications, plant owner and operator Holtec International said in a news release. The Palisades reactor core consists of 204 fuel assemblies that include new fuel and partially used fuel from the plant’s most recent operating cycles. According to Holtec, the fuel loading is being conducted in accordance with plant procedures and technical specifications.
Franck Bernard, Sébastien Bonthoux, Marc Forestier, Antonio Sargeni, Julien Taforeau
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 200 | Number 1 | March 2026 | Pages S693-S706
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2025.2530299
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In recent years, the French Technical Safety Organization (IRSN) has developed a new project to simulate accurately the interaction between neutronics and thermal-hydraulic phenomena. This project, called the Advanced Neutronics and Thermal-hydraulic for the Analysis of the Reactor Safety (ANTARES), couples the thermal-hydraulic code CATHARE-3 with the three-dimensional neutronics nodal code PARCS. Following the recent reorganization of nuclear safety in France, this project is now led by French Authority for Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection (ASNR). The aim is to provide ASNR with a multiphysics computing tool for carrying out safety analyses primarily for pressurized water reactors. To increase the reliability of ANTARES, IRSN has decided to participate in the TVA Watts Bar Unit 1 Multi-Physics Multi-Cycle Depletion benchmark proposed and supported within the framework of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development/Nuclear Energy Agency Working Party on Scientific Issues of Reactor Systems working group. After a brief description of the ANTARES computational chain, this paper presents our first results, which demonstrate a good agreement between ANTARES and the proposed reference solutions by the benchmark team.