Nuclear fuel cycle is comprised of a series of complex processes to deal with the energy resource of natural uranium ranging from mining, to the fabrication of nuclear fuels for power reactors, and then to the back-end processes of used fuel for final disposal in the waste repository. There are various socio-technical issues in the nuclear fuel cycle system beyond the technical development of the their individual process, and they are such as energy security, economic competitiveness, environmental impact of radiological hazard, ethical issues, etc. It is important for both the social decision of energy policy and the progress of nuclear industry in future, in order to get the social consensus about those issues among the different stakeholders.
The aim of this research is to explore a comprehensive analysis and communication platform to provide various analysis tools to look into those issues surrounding the nuclear fuel cycle system, and to offer a common basis for discussion and communication between experts and general people for the evaluation of different options by considering the trade-off among multi-criteria.
For the above purpose, the authors have proposed a new communication platform for the analysis of nuclear fuel cycle issues by introducing the Multilevel Flow Model¡¡(MFM) which has been traditionally applied for various process plant to reduce various operation support systems such as signal validation, alarm analysis, fault diagnosis, operation procedure, etc. In concrete, the visualized tool software MFMS¡¡(Multilevel Flow Model Studio) developed by the authors has been used to construct¡¡the¡¡MFM model for the various material flows and energy flows to configure the various technical processes of the nuclear fuel cycle system. These flow structures are very essential for understanding the complex process system, and also for the foundation of various analysis methods for socio-technical issues.