Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba

Yuichi Motora

Yuji Yamada

Akira Ito

Makoto Ueda

Yoichi Masuda

Hajime Mori

Kunihiko Kinugasa

Yasuhiro Sakai

Ritsuo Yoshioka

Toshihiro Yasuda

Yuki Minato

Mitsuharu Nakamura

Tohru Ishikawa

Haruhiko Hata

Shigenori Shiga

Kozue Matsukawa

Kiyofumi Saiki

Tomoki Fujita

Tomonobu Sakuranaga

Munenari Yamamoto

A bolt fixing device is configured so that a lock cap is pushed up by elastic force of an elastic member and engages upper surface teeth with lower surface teeth, the upper surface teeth being formed on the upper surface of a flange of a lock cap, the lower surface teeth being formed on the lower surface of an engagement flange of a body housing. Thus, the head bolt of a jet pump beam is fixed. With the configuration, when installing an inlet mixer, the head bolt of the jet pump beam is simply and reliably locked against rotation.

Jet pump and bolt fixing device of jet pump beam

A TIG welding method is usually carried out in a manner that a tungsten electrode is inserted into a weld groove portion of a member to be welded, an electric voltage is applied to a current conducting portion provided for the tungsten electrode while flowing a shield gas means to thereby generate an arc between the tungsten electrode and the member to be welded to form a molten pool of the member, a welding wire is inserted into the molten pool, and a welding torch is then operated to perform a welding process. In the improvement of the TIG welding method, the shield gas means is composed of an inner shield gas flowing from a periphery of the tungsten electrode to a front end thereof inserted into the weld groove portion of the member to be welded and an outer shield gas flowing towards the weld groove angle from an outside of the inner shield gas to prevent the molten pool from being oxidized and to prevent oxygen in air from being involved. The TIG welding torch for carrying out the method is specifically provided with the inner and outer shield gas flow means, and further provided with a central shield gas flow means.

TIG welding method and welding torch therefor

In the field of commercial nuclear reactors, there is an increasing demand for long-life control blades in order to meet the requirements of higher economy and reduction in the disposal of radioactive wastes. A control blade proposed by the invention stands a long use by virtue of the use of a long-life neutron absorber which is typically made of hafnium. Despite the use of hafnium which has a large specific weight (13.3 g/cm.sup.3), the size, shape and weight of the control blade are substantially the same as those of conventional control blades which employ boron carbides B.sub.4 C as the neutron absorber, so that the control blade can be back-fitted in existing boiling water reactors without difficulty. The control blade of this invention is a flux-trap-type control blade in which long-life neutron absorber plates or sheets are arranged to oppose each other in the thicknesswise direction of the wing within the sheath plate such that a water gap is preserved between the opposing neutron absorber plates, so that the weight of the hafnium, which occupies most part of the total weight of the control blade, is reduced by an amount corresponding to the volume of the water gap. The thickness of the neutron absorber plates or sheets is increased at the upper portion of the control blade where the neutron exposure is specifically high and where a large neutron absorption power or capacity is required for ensuring a sufficient reactor shut-down margin, while the thickness is reduced in other portions so as to increase the size of the water gap. In consequence, the weight of the control blade incorporating heavy hafnium as the neutron absorber is reduced almost to the same level as that of ordinary control blades, without being accompanied by any reduction in the reactivity worth.

Control blade for nuclear reactor

A control blade for a nuclear reactor having inserted upper end structural members and inserted lower end structural members connected to a plurality of wings each in the form of a generally rectangular plate having an longitudinal axis extending in the longitudinal direction of the control blade, the wing being disposed to form a cross-shaped section of the control blade. The wings and the structural members are connected to and supported on a central connection member. Each wing or a sheath member formed within each wing is formed from a diluted alloy obtained by diluting a long-lived neutron absorber such as hafnium with a diluent such as zirconium or titanium. A plurality of neutron absorber housing holes are formed in the diluted alloy section. Specifically, if the housing holes are formed to extend in the widthwise direction of the wing, the sectional area of each housing hole formed in a portion of the control blade corresponding to the region where the subcriticality in the reactor core becomes smaller after the reactor has been shut down by fully inserting the control blade into the core is larger than that of housing holes formed in the other regions. A structure having a means to cope with swelling of the neutron absorber can be applied to the former region.

Growing community of inventors

Tokyo, Japan

Yuichi Motora