Japan Nuclear Fuel Co., Ltd.

Tatsumo Yoshida

Makoto Udaka

Takasi Sekine

Kenji Umezu

An apparatus for automatically loading one or more kinds of nuclear fuel pellets in fuel cladding tubes for producing nuclear fuel rods comprises at least one pellet transporting tray transferred from a tray stacking unit and provided with a plurality of grooves on which the fuel pellets are mounted, at least one pellet aligning tray provided with a groove selectively connected with one of the grooves of the pellet transporting tray at one end of the aligning tray, and a fuel cladding tube supporting device located in the vicinity of the other end of the aligning tray and adapted to support a number of fuel cladding tubes so that a selected one fuel cladding tube is operatively connected to the aligning tray. The fuel pellets are transferred from the transporting tray into the aligning tray by means of a pushing device and the row of the pellets transferred on the groove of the aligning tray is moved forwardly until it abuts against a stopping mechanism located in association with the aligning tray. The row of pellets is separated at the predetermined portion by a row length defining device so that the separated forward portion of the pellet row has a predetermined length including allowable common difference and then the separated pellet row is loaded into the cladding tube to produce the fuel rod. During these operations the weight of the fuel pellets to be loaded is properly measured.

Growing community of inventors

Yokosuka, Japan

Tatsumo Yoshida