EPCm assistance to the develoment of a Lead-cooled Fast Reactor (LFR) and a MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility (M3F)
Project presentation
The client, established in 2021, aims to disrupt the nuclear energy sector. Its mission is to deliver safe, clean, affordable, and virtually inexhaustible energy to the world by developing and deploying a fleet of Lead-cooled Fast Reactors (LFR, Generation IV), alongside the construction of its own MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility (M3F).
As with all Advanced Modular Reactor (AMR) companies, the need for extensive studies is significant, as the time and effort required from Concept and Detailed Design through to Optioneering represent a major challenge.
In this context, Assystem has been hired by the client engineering departments in France, Italy and UK to help addressing these challenges, offering technical support for the development of both the LFR and the MOX fuel fabrication facility (M3F).
Project Scope
- MOX Fabrication process modelling: MBSE created with CAPELLA to identify and develop the functional analysis of the M3F, taking into account flows and nuclear constraints.
- Nuclear Safety studies: Probabilistic analysis to develop the reactor’s features and deterministic nuclear safety analysis to prepare the Safety Body seminar concerning M3F.
- Electrical & Supervision studies, including cybersecurity: even if services are not the first to be developed in such studies (reactor and factory), it is essential to develop appropriate architectures to meet production requirements and to address security expectations.
- Fuel route optioneering to go through heavy liftings, storage capacities, waste and spent fuels routes, taking into account lead specificities and special regulations.
- Qualification of electrical and ventilation devices, as existing certifications cannot be used and everything has to be defined from scratch and tailored to the new context.
- Cooling Island optioneering: to propose and select the most appropriate solutions to cover geographical targets and changing environmental conditions.
Client benefits
The Customer appreciates the capacity of ASSYSTEM to:
- Provide a team:
- fully aware about Nuclear stakes
- operational with System Engineering tools
- able to discuss Safety Body expectations
- Be able to quickly mobilise tens of specialists in scarce resource areas.
- To be adaptable to the project maturity, i.e. to implement evolutive contractual formats (from T&M to lump sum) and to be able to compensate for the lack of input data.
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