[1] Fresh and spent fuel management [3]

Fuel management of nuclear power plants includes the tasks described next.

(1) Fresh fuel acquisition

Fuel assemblies manufactured in a nuclear fuel factory are transported to the power plant 3-4 months before the periodic inspection and then the acceptance inspection of fresh fuel is made to ensure there was no abnor­mality caused during the transport, and to confirm the fuel assembly appearance and size are as specified.

(2) Refueling during overhaul

Fresh fuel assemblies are stored in the fresh fuel storage after the accep­tance inspection and then moved to spent fuel storage pool before the periodic inspection. Alternatively, fresh fuel assemblies may be directly moved to the spent fuel storage pool after the acceptance inspection without being stored in fresh fuel storage.

In BWR refueling, usually not all fuel assemblies are moved to spent fuel storage pool as long as there is no large-scale construction in the core and reload fuel assemblies are shuffled in the core. Spent fuel assemblies are discharged to the spent fuel storage pool, and fresh fuel assemblies are loaded and shuffled in the core. After fuel loading, underwater TV cameras are used to confirm that the fuel assemblies are correctly loaded according to the fuel loading pattern.