Page 235 - Neutrons for Sciences and Society

2018 UPDATE: The ILL between 2005 and 2018
to instruments on the basis of peer review, effective personnel safety regulations ...). That this has been possible is due to the remarkable original design of the ILL reactor, a flexible design which has permitted extensive modification. It is noteworthy that the reactor was designed at a time when the methods to evaluate performance and risks were much more limited than nowadays.
11.3.1 The Refit
As part of a regular safety review of the ILL reactor that took place in 2002, the ILL engaged in a vast programme of actions
to reinforce and renew the whole of the nuclear installations in compliance with currently applicable seismic regulations, while maintaining active research activities and keeping the momentum of the Millennium Programme. The programme of work, the Refit programme, comprised many tasks ranging from the reinforcement of buildings against seismic hazards to new control systems, including all aspects related to the storage, manufacture and reprocessing of fuel elements.
The first objective of the Refit programme was to ensure that three main structures of the reactor building remain stable in case of an earthquake (at level 5.7 on the Richter scale): the inner concrete containment vessel, the inner concrete structures and the outer metal containment vessel. Extensive civil engineering works were carried out, with the reinforcement of the reactor building itself and the strengthening or dismantling of adjacent buildings. In particular, 1500 tons of concrete structures were removed
from the building itself in order to reduce the inertia of the inner
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