Key points for the design of Mox facilities

The design of a MOX fuel fabrication facility involves specific technical difficulties: - Process aspects: for example, its is necessary to meet the stringent requirements on the end products, while handling large quantities of powders and pellets; - Safety aspects: for example, containment of radioactive materials requires to use gloveboxes, to design process equipment so as to limit dispersion to the gloveboxes and to use systems for dust collection. - Technological aspects: for example, it is necessary to take into account maintenance early in the design, in order to lower the operation costs and lower the dose to the personnel. - Quality control and information systems: for example, it is necessary to be able to trace all the different products (powder lots, pellets, rods, assemblies). The design methods and organization set-up by COGEMA enables to master these technical difficulties during the different design steps and to obtain a MOX fabrication facility at the best performance versus cost compromise. These design methods rely mainly on: - taking into account all the different above mentioned constraints from the very beginning of the design process (by using the know-how resulting from experience feed-back, and also specific design tools developed by COGEMA and SGN); - launching a technical development and testing program at the beginning of the project and incorporating its results in the course of the design. (author)