New phenomena observed during fuel assemblies testing

The paper presents a new attempt to explain inexplicable increase of specific activity for some of the fuel assemblies during the fuel tightness testing procedures on Kozloduy NPP. A brief description of established procedure for fuel tightness control is presented in the paper. Special emphasis is given on a hypothesis that explains the fact of existence of deviation in Iodine activity more than usual, which have no reasonable interpretation. The reasons for uniform high Iodine activity for reloaded assemblies, that have kept in the open measuring can for a long time (1-3 hours), is found to be the process of Iodine dissolving in the water and the accelerated process of natural degassing. A proposal to use the 134Cs and 137Cs as stand-alone criteria for more precise results is made in respect to increase the reliability of fuel reloading and storage procedures