Laguna Verde BWRs operational experience: steady-state fuel performance

The two BWR at Laguna Verde nuclear power station are finishing 21 and 15 years of continuous successful operation as of 2010. During Unit 1 and 2 commercial operations only Ge/GNF fuel designs have been employed; fuel lattice designs 8 x 8 and 10 x 10 were used at the reactor, with an original licensed thermal power (OLTP: 1931 MWt) and the reactor's first power up-rates of 5%. GNF fuel will be also used for the second EPU to reach 120% of OLTP in the near future. Thermal and gamma traversing in-core probes (Tip) are used for power monitoring purposes along with the Ge (now GNF-A) core monitoring system, 3-dimensional MonicoreTM. GNF-A has also participated by preparing the core management plan that is regularly fine-tuned in collaboration with Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE owner of the Laguna Verde reactors). For determination of thermal margins and eigenvalue prediction, GNF-A employs the NRC-licensed steady-state core simulator PANAC11. Tip comparisons are routinely used to adapt power distributions for a better thermal margin calculation. Over the years, several challenges have appeared in the near and long term fuel management planning such as increasing cycle length, optimization of the thermal margins, rated power increase, etc. Each challenge has been successfully overcome via operational strategy, code improvements and better fuel designs. This paper summarizes Laguna Verde Unit 1 and 2 steady-state performance from initial commercial operation, with a discussion of the nuclear and thermal-hydraulic design features, as well as of the operational strategies that set and interesting benchmark for future fuel applications, code development and operation of the BWRs. (Author)