Optimal sizes and siting of nuclear fuel reprocessing plants

The expansion of a nuclear economy entails the development of fuel process and reprocessing plant programmes. The model proposed makes it possible to select the size, the site and the start-up schedule of the plants in such a way as to minimize the total freight and reprocessing costs. As an illustration, we have approached the problem of burnt natural uranium processing plants related to natural uranium-graphite as nuclear power stations. The sites and annual output of the reactors, the possible plant sites and cost functions (freight and reprocessing) are supposed to be known. The method consists in first approaching the process plant problem as a Dynamic Programming problem, increasing programme slices (total reactor output) being explored sequentially. When the quantities of burnt natural uranium to be reprocessed are fixed, the minimization of the transport cost is then also carried out as a dynamic programming problem. The neighbourhood of the optimum process cost is explored in order to find the minimum summation of a suboptimal processing cost and corresponding optimal transport cost. As the reprocessing problem can be represented on a sequential graph, in order to compute the sub-optima, we developed and used a 'reflexion algorithm'. The method can be interpreted as a general mechanism for determining the optimum when to a sequential dynamic problem (for example an equipment programme) is added a complementary problem (transport, for instance). It also makes it possible to estimate the economic losses which result from the choice of a non optimal policy for other than economic reasons. (author)