Global Nuclear Fuel - Americas, LLC

Ge-hitachi Nuclear Energy Americas LLC

Timothy W Clark

Yuk-Chiu Lau

David W White

Paul Everett Cantonwine

Kevin L Ledford

Yang-Pi Lin

Nicholas R Gullette

Robert William Viren

Nuclear reactor components are treated with thermal methods to increase wear resistance. Example treatments include thermal treatments using particulate or powderized materials to form a coating. Methods can use cold spray, with low heat and high velocities to blast particles on the surface. The particles impact and mechanically deform, forming an interlocking coating with the surface and each other without melting or chemically reacting. Materials in the particles and resultant coatings include metallic alloys, ceramics, and/or metal oxides. Nuclear reactor components useable with methods of increased wear resistance include nuclear fuel rods and assemblies containing the same. Coatings may be formed on any desired surface, including fuel rod positions where spacer contact and fretting is most likely.

Fuel rods with wear-inhibiting coatings

A system and method for conducting Non-Destructive Examination (NDE) inspections and integrating inspection data with encoding information may include a NDE probe configured to conduct a non-destructive examination of an object, a shape sensing fiber optic cable attached to the NDE probe, the fiber optic cable configured to receive a frequency of light and to reflect the received light, a fiber optic cable shape sensing detector configured to generate light of the frequency, measure the shape of the shape sensing fiber optic cable based on the reflected light from the shape sensing fiber optic cable, and determine position information and orientation information of the NDE probe based on the measured shape of the fiber optic cable, and a processor configured to encode the examination data, the encoding including correlating the position information and the orientation information with the examination data.

Fiber optic shape sensing technology for encoding of NDE exams

Nuclear reactor components are treated with thermal methods to increase wear resistance. Example treatments include thermal treatments using particulate or powderized materials to form a coating. Methods can use cold spray, with low heat and high velocities to blast particles on the surface. The particles impact and mechanically deform, forming an interlocking coating with the surface and each other without melting or chemically reacting. Materials in the particles and resultant coatings include metallic alloys, ceramics, and/or metal oxides. Nuclear reactor components usable with methods of increased wear resistance include nuclear fuel rods and assemblies containing the same. Coatings may be formed on any desired surface, including fuel rod positions where spacer contact and fretting is most likely.

Fuel rods with wear-inhibiting coatings and methods of making the same

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Wilmington, NC, United States of America

Timothy W Clark