In-core Fuel Management Services
Do you want to achieve an optimum core configuration and make huge savings on fuel? If you succeed in making a load of nuclear fuel last longer, you will save money and cut your radioactive waste production. NRG's ROSA software helps optimise in-core fuel management.
All PWR reactor operators are on a quest for the `optimum core`. A 1% reduction in fuel costs can save the operator of a large nuclear plant a million euros per fuel cycle. A software tool developed by NRG allows savings of up to 5%. Not surprisingly, its Reloading Optimization by Simulating Annealing (ROSA) software is attracting a great deal of interest.
ROSA can generate a large number of possible core loading patterns, taking into account a range of complex parameters, allowing the fuel manager to decide which is the best option, based on safety, economical and technical considerations. Although ROSA is not unique, it does offer a number of major advantages. According to the market, ROSA outperforms all its rivals when it comes to ease-of-use, speed and accuracy.
ROSA is suitable for both operational plants and new plants. In 2009, the package was also adapted for use in Westinghouse's planned AP1000 reactors. Demand has therefore grown, particularly in the United States. American power producers are now looking decades ahead, to plants that will be commissioned in several years time.
In the United States ROSA is also being used to configure the cores of nuclear plants that were never completed in the 1980s. Now these plants are being brought online, operators are using ROSA to forecast their operating costs and fuel consumption.
NRG guarantees that its software can easily look ten years ahead. The architecture is designed for speed, making the NRG package at least a hundred times faster than rival products. A single fuel cycle lasting 500 days can be calculated in just a few thousandths of a second, giving the client all the necessary information on the behaviour of the core, ranging from the spot with the highest temperature, to the fresh fuel requirement or the best moment for the outage.
Clients sign a license agreement with NRG, after which they are free to use ROSA in-house. NRG keeps the software up-to-date, and provides operational support.