Impact of nuclear fuel cycle operation factor uncertainty on nuclear power plant operation

Abe, Takumi ; Nishihara, Kenji  

The robustness of an entire nuclear fuel cycle (NFC) can be assessed through simulations of the operational factors (OFs) of future NFC facilities, combined with mass flow analyses assuming many time series of OFs. In this study, the uncertainty of OF caused by minor troubles, which causes the expansion of the regular maintenance or temporary suspension, was focused on. OF of a reprocessing plant with the uncertainty were predicted by autoregressive moving average model. As a demonstration of the methodology to assess the robustness of an NFC, using the predicted OF data and a NFC simulator, NMB code, the impact of a reprocessing plant OF on a fast reactor OF was quantified. As a results, extra reprocessing capacity or additional plutonium stock induced higher robustness of an NFC.