Year
1987
Abstract
Tuesday December 9th, 1986 : ten years, almost to the very day, after starting of the construction, SUPER PHENIX 1 has achieved its full power level. Fruit of an exemplary European cooperation, this unit is the largest fast breeder reactor in operation in the world. This paper provides a short technical description of the plant. The design, which is an extrapolation from PHENIX, is characterized by a very high level of integration (the whole primary circuit is located within the reactor vessel) and by a complete separation of the routes of the fresh fuel assemblies and the irradiated fuel assemblies once they are outside sodium. Next, the general principles of safeguards implementation are presented. The methodology adopted is based upon the verification of the integrity of all the containments, the identification of the fuel assemblies through their identification number and the possibility to discriminate between the different kinds of items going out from the reactor. The containment/ surveillance measures play then an important role.