Westinghouse Electric Corporation

Robert R Fuller

Kenneth C Radford

Beryl H Parks

Herbert W Keller

Apparatus for depositing a coating (such as a burnable absorber) on nuclear fuel pellets. Pallets 16 hold a single layer of fuel pellets 22 between lower and upper screened parts 18 and 20. A rotating drum 14 holds the pallets 16 on its circumference. A chamber 12 encloses the drum 14. A sputtering machine 24 has stationary, sputter-frangible, upper and lower targets (such as zirconium diboride) 26 and 28. The stationary upper targets 26 are placed inside the drum's circumference above its longitudinal axis and are pointed facing generally upward and radially outward. The stationary lower targets 28 are placed outside the drum's circumference below its longitudinal axis and are pointed facing generally upward and radially inward. The target material is sputtered onto the fuel pellets 22 as the pallets 16 on the drum 14 rotate past.

Apparatus for coating nuclear fuel pellets with a burnable absorber

A hydrolysis column, used to hydrolyze uranium hexafluoride gas with water in an ammonium diuranate conversion process, which includes a pipe having a water inlet, a connector inserted in the pipe intermediate its length, and a gas nozzle connected to the connector to feed uranium hexafluoride gas into the water. Since the uranium hexafluoride gas will freeze at 147.degree. F, the gas nozzle is heated by steam which flows through internal passageways, thus imparting sufficient heat to the nozzle which then acts as a heat sink to maintain the gas in a fluid state. The gas-water mixture is then discharged through the pipe outlet to the next step in the process.

Hydrolysis column for an ammonium diuranate conversion line processing

Process and apparatus for producing ammonium diuranate (ADU) from uranium hexafluoride (UF.sub.6) wherein gaseous UF.sub.6 is first hydrolyzed, then partially neutralized with aqueous ammonium hydroxide to a pH of from 5 to 6, the resultant solution is conveyed to a precipitation vessel wherein it is admixed with additional aqueous ammonium hydroxide to a pH of from 9.8 to 10.2 whereby ADU solids precipitate, the resultant suspension is substantially continually withdrawn from the precipitation vessel and a stream of the suspension is forcefully injected back into the side of the vessel at the liquid surface at an angle to the horizontal liquid surface in the precipitation vessel to cause intense agitation and circulation or tumbling of the suspension in said vessel, the volume of the suspension being so withdrawn and circulated constituting a turnover of the total suspension volume in the vessel in the order of about a minute or less, whereby fine ADU crystals with closely consistent properties are produced, so that digestion tanks and storage vessels previously necessary in the ADU process are eliminated. A small portion of the slurry suspension from the precipitation vessel in continually withdrawn and centrifuged to provide an ADU solids stream of consistently and controllably uniform properties such that when fed to a calcining kiln it produces UO.sub.2 powder of highly uniform characteristics rendering it suitable for producing UO.sub.2 fuel pellets of about 95% of theoretical density, without milling the UO.sub.2 to a finer particle size.

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Columbia, SC, United States of America

Robert R Fuller