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Swiss nuclear power and the case for long-term operation
Designed for 40 years but built to last far longer, Switzerland’s nuclear power plants have all entered long-term operation. Yet age alone says little about safety or performance. Through continuous upgrades, strict regulatory oversight, and extensive aging management, the country’s reactors are being prepared for decades of continued operation, in line with international practice.
Abdellatif M. Yacout, Won-Sik Yang, Gerard L. Hofman, Yuri Orechwa
Nuclear Technology | Volume 115 | Number 1 | July 1996 | Pages 61-72
Technical Paper | Nuclear Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT96-A35275
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Integral parameters of reactor fuel pins are usually measured after long periods of irradiation, where each period can extend over a number of irradiation cycles. Examples of these parameters include cladding diametral strain and parameters involved in the evaluation of fuel/cladding chemical interaction and fuel restructuring. Analysis of these parameters requires knowledge of calculated irradiation parameters, which can vary between irradiation cycles and within the cycles. Irradiation temperature is one such parameter. A calculated weighted average temperature that takes into account the fluctuations in temperature between irradiation cycles is introduced. The work discusses the justification for using this temperature and a methodology for its validation. The methodology is based on comparing calculated average temperatures with temperatures inferred from the postirradiation examination of restructured binary metallic fuel pins in the Experimental Breeder Reactor II. The analysis shows reasonable agreement between the two temperatures. The peak irradiation temperatures, which are usually used in the analysis, were out of the range of the temperatures inferred from the experimental observations, showing the importance of using the average temperature.