Areva - Reference Document 2016

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS, PATENTS AND LICENSES

11.1 Research and Development

processmercury waste, asbestos waste, organic waste not accepted at the Centraco

incineration facility, acidic waste, activated metals, powder waste and others.

Designed to meet the needs of AREVA’s waste retrieval, cleanup and dismantling

projects, some of these developments are also of great interest to our Asian partners

and customers, particularly for the packaging of radioactive sludge and waste

and for contact maintenance and cutting scenarios and technologies used in the

cleanup of buildings and reactors.

An important area for improvement is the inclusion of digital and connected tools in

all operations in this field. Illustrations include the deployment of a product lifecycle

management tool (PLM) to manage the configuration of facilities undergoing

dismantling at the la Hague site, the use of touch tablets to monitor projects or to

collect and use operating experience, and the development of tools to simulate

equipment operations. In particular, a simulator for polar crane operations was

developed in 2016 to train operators on this highly specialized equipment. The first

presentations and training given in 2016met with success with the entire profession.

The development of other modules is planned, and the prospects of using such a

tool opens up opportunities for the sale of new services in this segment.

R&D activities of AREVA Projects in the fuel cycle

AREVA Projects is a key partner for the research and development programs of

the business units. Specifically, AREVA Projects brings the engineering skills and

expertise needed in the phases which precede the industrial implementation of

products and processes resulting from R&D in the entities: feasibility studies and

front-end engineering and design of innovative facilities; final development and

qualification of simulation tools and of processes; products and equipment for

use in the fuel cycle facilities of AREVA or its customers; and operator support.

The Beaumont-Hague development and testing laboratory (HRB), an AREVA

Projects technical center located near the la Hague recycling plant, houses the

activities of the two main divisions: Technology, which develops specific tools and

response scenarios and also develops and qualifies mechanical equipment; and

Chemistry, which deals with a broad range of topics, including the development

and qualification of chemical engineering equipment and of waste treatment and

packaging processes (cementation, vitrification, drying, etc.) for AREVA’s different

entities.

R&D ACTIVITIES OF AREVA NP

R&D activities of AREVA NP in nuclear fuel

Improving nuclear fuel performance

AREVA NP conducts ambitious research and development programs to adapt its

products to its customers’ performance requirements, up to high burnup levels, with

the goal of continually improving fuel reliability during operations and guaranteeing

the highest level of safety. These research and development programs involve:

developing new fuel designs, in particular to optimize thermo-hydraulic

performance and enhance operating robustness;

adapting to changes in nuclear fleet operating conditions, whether for the

cladding or structural materials (new alloys for greater resistance to corrosion

and deformation) or for the fuel itself (advanced microstructures to reduce the

release of fission gases at high burnups);

responding to questions from the safety authorities concerning fuel behavior in

accident situations, in particular during an earthquake, requiring the development

of new methods in an environment of changing safety standards and of new

accident-tolerant fuel concepts (ATF);

developing advanced codes and related methods for PWR and BWR fuel

incorporating the neutronics, thermos-hydraulics and thermos-mechanics of

the fuel rod;

working with scientific partners, notably the CEA, to improve the modeling of

physical phenomena occurring in the fuel during irradiation, and integrating

these models into advanced simulation software.

AREVA continues to develop a new generation of more robust fuel assemblies

with enhanced performance and safety margins for boiling water reactors (BWR)

and pressurized water reactors (PWR), called Atrium™11 and Gaia respectively:

following the first Atrium

11 test assemblies, now in their fourth irradiation

cycle in the core of the Gundremmingen reactor in Germany (RWE), irradiation

continues on other assemblies loaded into the Leibstadt reactor in Switzerland

(AXPO) in 2013 and the Olkiluoto 1 reactor in Finland (TVO) in 2014;

the first Gaia test assemblies delivered to the Vattenfall electric utility in Sweden

completed their fourth irradiation cycle in the Ringhals 3 reactor core;

work to make Gaia test assemblies available in 2018 for EDF’s 14ft (N4) reactor

made significant progress in 2016with the completion of mechanical and thermo-

hydraulic tests on full-scale assembly mockups;

deployment of the Gaia and Atrium™11 technologies in the United States

continues with the start of test assembly irradiation, initially by two U.S. utilities

in 2015;

development work continued on various types of ATF cladding, including

chromium-coated zirconium alloy cladding, as well as on a disruptive concept

of SiC-SiCf composite cladding, notably with the introduction of the first test

components in Switzerland’s Göesgen reactor in 2016. This development was

the subject of a number of partnerships, in particular with the CEA, EDF and

the U.S. DOE.

R&D activities of AREVA NP in reactors and services

Widening the range of light water reactors and supporting

their deployment

EPR REACTOR

Work carried out in partnership with EDF to optimize the EPR reactor design’s

economic performance was completed in 2014. This paves for the way for definition

of an optimized design basis which the proposal and project teams may use to

define adaptations needed to meet customer specifications.

The start of the Hinkley Point C Project in the United Kingdom represents a

culmination of this cooperation. AREVA NP’s R&D team mobilized to define and

qualify the improvements made to this project, such as pumps with hydrodynamic

seals that simplify the architecture of sealing systems in the event of a loss of

electrical power, and a more compact instrumentation and control system.

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2016 AREVA

REFERENCE DOCUMENT