Study of the developmental status and operational features of heavy water reactors. Final report

The Canadian Heavy Water Reactor System, CANDU, and future plans for it as reported in a number of recent Canadian papers, are briefly reviewed. This has been done recognizing several leading observers of the nuclear industry suggest CANDU may represent a promising longer term route to nuclear fuel self sufficiency. It now appears that the concept is well established with a demonstrated performance comparable to the best LWR installations, but it presently has fuel utilization efficiency which is of the same order as that of the current LWRs. It should also be noted that CANDU is designed to a different set of safety and regulatory criteria; a point having potential for at least a second order economic significance to many non-Canadian markets. The feature of particular interest, however, is that the system is indicated by the Canadian Government Corporation-Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.- to be capable of upgrading to a thermal near breeder. As such, this is a point of substantial import, given that system hardware is already proven, of demonstrated safety, reliability and economy, and one for which some supply industry capability is now in place. Remaining areas of uncertainty in the planned CANDU program are those related to the near breeder fuel cycle with its implied fuel processing and recycling requirements, the economics of future heavy water supply, and the actual demonstration of the physics of a unity converter/near breeder. It is noted that recently a variant of this LWBR using heavy water coolant, has been proposed by U.S. workers. Thus LWBR related efforts may be a more appropriate direction for U.S. investigations than a direct focus on CANDU itself. It is recommended that further investigation of such improved conversion developments for existing LWRs be conducted; they could represent a potential addition to the present U.S. program for a 100 percent LMFBR future