Planning and supervision of reactor defueling using discrete event techniques

New fuel handling and conditioning activities for the defueling of the Experimental Breeder Reactor II are being performed at Argonne National Laboratory. Research is being conducted to investigate the use of discrete event simulation, analysis, and optimization techniques to plan, supervise, and perform these activities in such a way that productivity can be improved. The central idea is to characterize this defueling operation as a collection of interconnected serving cells, and then apply operational research techniques to identify appropriate planning schedules for given scenarios. In addition, a supervisory system is being developed to provide personnel with online information on the progress of fueling tasks and to suggest courses of action to accommodate changing operational conditions. This paper provides an introduction to the research in progress at ANL. In particular, it briefly describes the fuel handling configuration for reactor defueling at ANL, presenting the flow of material from the reactor grid to the interim storage location, and the expected contributions of this work. As an example of the studies being conducted for planning and supervision of fuel handling activities at ANL, an application of discrete event simulation techniques to evaluate different fuel cask transfer strategies is given at the end of the paper