Ukraine hosts 'zero-failure fuel' working group

Ukrainian state nuclear corporation Energoatom has this week hosted the working group created five years ago to achieve a zero-failure rate of nuclear fuel. The group visited the Khmelnitsky nuclear power plant.

Energoatom is one of four companies involved in the project, the others being Russian nuclear fuel manufacturer TVEL, the Kozloduy nuclear power station in Bulgaria and Czech utility CEZ, which operates the Dukovany and Temelín nuclear power plants. The project assesses the processes of designing, manufacturing and operating nuclear fuel, and seeks ways to identify reasons for the failure of nuclear fuel used in VVER-1000 reactors.

"The Zero Nuclear Failure Rate international project was founded in 2012 and Ukraine immediately joined the participants because the error-free and accident-free operation of nuclear fuel is our common goal," Natalia Shumkova, the executive director of nuclear and radiation safety, and scientific and technical support at Energoatom, said in a company statement yesterday.

During the visit to the Khmelnitsky plant, the working group experts "discussed the practice of excluding the ingress of foreign objects into the open equipment of the primary circuit, and ways to introduce the daily power regulation mode to VVER-1000 reactors with TVSA fuel", Energoatom said.

"The experience of the Khmelnitsky nuclear power plant collective and the knowledge that we have communicated to each other is another step in achieving the common goal of zero-level nuclear fuel failure," Shumkova said.

TVEL supplies fuel to 76 reactors in 14 countries.

Energoatom operates four nuclear power plants - Zaporozhe, Rovno, South Ukraine and Khmelnitsky - which comprise 15 nuclear reactors, including 13 VVER-1000s and two VVER-440s with a total capacity of 13,835 MWe.

Researched and written
by World Nuclear News