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Bhabha Atomic Research Centre develops automation system for reprocessing |
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Written by James
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Monday, 19 September 2011 |
Mumbai: Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) has indigenously designed and developed an automation system for reprocessing plants, where the spent fuel bundles of Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) are transferred directly* from fuel handling area (FHA) of the storage pool to the dissolver cell in an automated way. This system does away with the necessity of using a charging cask.
The first such system will be set up at BARC's fuel reprocessing plant at Tarapur in Maharashtra. The BARC Safety Council has reviewed and approved a preliminary safety analysis report (PSAR).
The design was developed by D N Badodkar of the Division of Remote Handling and Robotics.
According to Manjit Singh, Director of Remote Handling and Robotics and Design, Manufacturing and Automation Group of BARC, this would eliminate dependency on skilled man-power. The design can also be adapted to handle fuel from 220MW PHWR and 550 MW / 700 MW with very few changes. It incorporates a provision for manual changing of spent fuel in the event of non-availability of automation systems.
* The spent fuel bundles of Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors are stored under water at the reactor site, where it is allowed to cool down for a certain period of time. Then these spent fuel bundles are transferred from the reactor site to the underwater storage facility at the nuclear fuel reprocessing plant site. |
