APIS is short for Accelerated Program for Implementation of secure VVER fuel Supply, indicating that the European countries operating VVER reactors have an urgent need to qualify an alternative fuel supplier to secure the future power generation.
APIS is latin for bee and is used as an analogy to symbolize that the project comprises a large group of hard working and friendly engineers that cooperate to secure nuclear fuel to the VVER cores that have the same hexagonal shape as honeycombs.
Westinghouse is leading the program, which is supported by eleven different partners including the affected utilities, another fuel manufacturer, fuel engineering and research organizations.
The program is co-funded by the European Union through the Euratom Work Programme 2023–25. It was started in January 2023 and has a duration of 36 months.
The APIS project is structured into eleven work-packages with different focuses, including:
– completion of the VVER-440 fuel design for short term delivery
– development of improved and advanced VVER-440 and VVER-1000 fuel designs
– standardization of the fuel licensing
– complete the re-instatement of fuel manufacturing capabilities
– improved modeling and methods
– analysis of fuel related plant lifetime extension
– communication and project management
