Pickering operations fuel performance review

CANDU fuel coupled with 'on power' fuelling has been a great economic success. The prime performance indicator of success being a lifetime fuel handling contribution to station incapability of only 0.6%. Fuel handling maintenance and operating cost has been about 2% of the total unit energy cost. Since in service, 245,000 fuel bundles have been irradiated at Pickering. Handling this large amount of fuel has presented a challenging variety of incidents and difficulties. From an operating experience viewpoint, the author submits that the fuel design is not fully optimized, and our fuel handling system has not been designed to fully cope with the constraints imposed by the fuel design. Viewed purely from a mechanical/hydraulic aspect a fuel bundle of half the present length and weight with a much lower sliding friction might be a desired direction of future development. In considering the past 15 years of Pickering maintenance experience the author contends full biological shielding should be provided on all fuel handling vessels and pathways for ease of access in recovery situations and system maintenance. In-core fuel failures are manageably small, however, as a result we do suffer significant maintenance γ dose due to our inability to locate and remove failed fuel