12th IGORR conference28-31 October 2009

Beijing

CONCLUDING REMARKS

IGORR OBJECTIVES

The IGORR charter can be summarized as

« Increase exchanges between research reactors community , to optimise and harmonize practice, efficiency and safety »

The first IGORR conference was in 1990

still strong interest within the RR community

A very good organisation for this 12th edition

• Thanks to CIAE for hosting this meeting• Thanks to Professor Yuan Luzheng ,

member of IGORR steering committee, to have proposed being the host for this12th meeting.

• Thanks to Dr Shen Feng , for the huge and excellent work made, before and during the meeting.

• Thanks to all the CIAE staff involved.

What an audience !!!(about 100 participants with 70 foreigners)

IGORR 2009

• Presentations made by the main RR in the world: -USA: HFIR, NIST, ATR -Europa : BR2, HFR, OSIRIS, FRMII, LVR15, HALDEN,

CABRI, EOLE, JHR project… -Asia : JMTR, CEFR, CARR, HANARO, OPAL, JRR3.°A global view of the markets and of reactors situation.°A good technical exchange of various subjects

(Commissioning , operation, maintenance, measurements, production, ..)

°Possibilities of contact for the future (don’t forget the IGORR web site ! )

A new president !

• I am happy to have managed this forum since 2006 , with the organisation of 11th (combined with RRFM Lyon-March 2007)and 12th IGORR conference

• But if I have been in charge of three reactors, it is no more the case in my new job. So I prefer to be replaced by some one, always directly involved in this field.

• The steering committee has approved , tuesday afternoon, M Gilles Bignan as new president.

Some highlights and remarksafter this conference

Continuous improvements whatever the age of the RR

• Reactors as HFIR,NIST,Hanaro,FRM2 ...are examples of continuous improvements.

• It shows the remarquable flexibility of research reactors configuration.

• It shows also for the new reactors the necessity during the design, to have a good flexibility ( capacity to change all the parts of the reactor).

Fuel optimisation

• Fuel cost is an important part of the operating budget.

• Parameters of fuel optimisation are various : power, length of the cycle, irradiation performance, core loading , refueling pattern, excess reactivity at the end of cycle...

• The JMTR presentation showed that , with this optimisation of in-core fuel management,the number of operating days can go from 180 to about 210 days/year with similar quantity of fuel.

• This type of exercise is recommended for any power RR (if not already done !)

Time life and Periodic Safety Assessment (PSA)

• Important topic for an ageing fleet of RR • PSA is of primary importance (especially with

the arrival of new safety rules) • The consecutive refurbishment can be

expensive (even very expensive…) according to Regulatory Bodies requirements

• The compliance with the update safety rules (example: paleoseism, centennial flooding…) can lead to the shut-down of the plant

Safety documentation updating

Everybody agrees on the necessity to update frequently the safety documentation (See OPAL presentation )

It allows to optimise the Operating Rules and to maintain the knowledge.

IGORR Meeting Improvement

• Increase the participation of Universities

• Increase the participation of developing countries hosting RR

• The IGORR web-site will be upgraded

• Any other ideas ?

Next IGORR MeetingWe will try to continue the rotation of IGORR

conference between Asia, Europa and USA.We want to avoid an increase number of meetings

(joining regularly others dedicated meetings such as RRFM…)

We want to maintain a frequency of about 18 months So the steering committee proposition is to have the next meeting , joined with TRTR (US organisation), in September 2010 in Knoxville –Tennesse near Oakridge (with of course a visit of HFIR…)

Week of September 19th 2010

Next IGORR Conference

• Please mark your calendar and advert your colleagues

See you then in September 2010 in USA (Knoxville –TN)