Fuel experience in QinShan CANDU

Qinshan 2 CANDU units were in turn declared commercial operation in 2003. They have started refueling on March and November 2003. Because fuel machines were not available several times by reasons of the equipment failures, the refueling rate fluctuated very much during initial refueling in unit no.1. But unit no.1 had never entered into Shim mode. Domestic fuel bundles were successfully used in Qinshan two units. The first batch of fuel bundles manually loaded were produced by ZPI, all the other fuel bundles for refueling were produced by domestic fuel manufacturer (202). In Qinshan, the efficient methods based on on-line monitor systems have been found, which can locate the exact position of channel and bundle for fuel failure. Up to now, only 5 fuel bundles have been confirmed defective in Unit no.1. (author)