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Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
Meeting Spotlight
Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo (UWC 2024)
August 4–7, 2024
Marco Island, FL|JW Marriott Marco Island
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Latest News
BWXT will scout potential TRISO fuel production sites in Wyoming
BWX Technologies Inc. announced today that its Advanced Technologies subsidiary has signed a cooperation agreement with the state of Wyoming to evaluate locations and requirements for siting a potential new TRISO nuclear fuel fabrication facility in the state.
A. J. Moorhead, R. W. McCulloch
Nuclear Technology | Volume 56 | Number 1 | January 1982 | Pages 7-22
Technical Paper | Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT82-A32876
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Laser welding and furnace brazing techniques have been developed to join subassemblies for fuel rod simulators (FRSs) that have survived up to 1000-h steady-state operation at 700 to 1100°C cladding temperatures and over 5000 thermal transients, ranging from 10 to 50°C/s. A pulsed-laser welding procedure uses small diameter filler wire to join one end of a resistance heating element to a tubular conductor. The other end of the heating element is laser welded to an end plug, which in turn is welded to a central conductor. Before these welding operations, the intermediate material conductors (either tubular or rod) are vacuum brazed to matching copper leads. On room temperature tensile testing, 10 of 11 brazements between copper and nickel rods failed in the copper rather than the brazement. The thin walls and ductility of the copper and nickel tubular conductors caused joint machining and fitup problems. Accordingly, it has not been possible to consistently produce tensile test samples of brazed dissimilar metal tubular conductors that will fail outside the joint area. A unique tubular electrode carrier has also been developed for gas tungsten arc welding FRSs to the tubesheet of a test assembly. Two seven-rod mockups of the simulator-to-tubesheet joint area were welded and successfully cycled 500 times from 370°C (698°F) down to 100°C (212°F) with an internal pressure of 11.72 MPa (1700 psi). No leakage was detected by helium mass spectrometry, either before or after testing. Modified versions of the electrode carrier were developed for brazing electrical leads to the upper ends of the FRSs. Satisfactory brazes have been made on both single-rod mockups and arrays of simulators.