Core and fuel management in the Shimane Nuclear Power Station

The construction of the Shimane Nuclear Power Station Unit I was started on February 11, 1970, and it was placed in commercial operation on March 29, 1974, the first domestic-made commercial nuclear power station in Japan. Since being placed in service, this plant has been operating very smoothly. A part of the first core fuel bundles were exchanged for new fuel bundles in every scheduled annual inspection outage. All of them had been discharged by the sixth scheduled annual inspection outage performed at the end of May 1980. In all of these scheduled annual inspection outages the irradiated fuel bundles were inspected. It was concluded that the fuel had been operated with integrity, there being no leak of fission products and no failure of the cladding. The utility factor in every fiscal year, except 1976 and 1977, was over 70% and the average utility factor of the past six fiscal years was 69.5%