I’ve been in the nuclear industry long enough to know that introducing new products or features to the market takes patience. So maybe that’s why, when we have a chance to share some news with our customers and the industry, we get a little excited.
When a fuel assembly is completed at our Richland fuel manufacturing facility, it goes into a storage room we call the “forest.” At a facility that churns out more than 2,000 fuel assemblies each year, having fuel assemblies hang like trees suspended from the ceiling, awaiting insertion into shipping containers, is an ordinary occurrence.
Every day, more than 400 employees pass through the doors at Framatome’s fuel fabrication facility in Richland, Wash., to oversee the safe, high-quality and on-time manufacturing and delivery of our world-class fuel products. But one employee, Destinee Rea [Ceramics Process Engineer], comes to work for something extra special.
Time is everything. Especially when you are preventing a potential accident of any kind. In the nuclear energy arena, enhanced accident tolerant fuel (EATF) started with this in mind. In the quest to make this powerful, efficient, and safe form of energy ever safer, a lot of people in the industry were asking the question – how do we give ourselves more time to react in the unlikely scenario of an accident in the nuclear reactor?
Join us on November 22 for a webinar on PROtect, Framatome’s enhanced accident tolerant fuel (EATF) program. Petra-Britt Hoffman, a senior expert in irradiation behavior of fuel rods and fuel assembly structural materials, will discuss Framatome’s near-term and long-term solutions as part of the PROtect program. Learn more and register.