Remote fabrication of nuclear fuel pellets

The equipment for remote fabrication of pellet fuels is in various stages of design, testing and evaluation. A pellet gaging system specifically designed to be maintained remotely has been demonstrated and is currently being interfaced with a programmable electro-mechanical manipulator to demonstrate completely automatic and remote disassembly and reassembly of the inspection unit. Pulsed magnetic welding of fuel rod end closures have been demonstrated. The solid-state welding technique allows the use of ultrasonics for weld inspection in place of traditional x-radiography. This welding and inspection method provides an attractive alternative for remote fuel fabrication. A new batch sintering furnace concept based upon aerospace technology is being developed. The furnace will have five to ten times the through-put of conventional batch furnaces and is easier to maintain than the horizontal furnaces in use today. Two high-speed mechanical press concepts (anvil and rotary) are currently being evaluated for remote operation and maintenance. The anvil press is especially attractive for remote fabrication due to its simplicity in set up and die change methods. All pellet fuel fabrication operations will be developed for remote operation and maintenance and representative fabrication rates will be demonstrated

Monopole Condensation and Dimensional Transmutation in SU(2) QCD

We resolve the controversy on the stability of the monopole condensation in the one-loop effective action of SU(2) QCD by calculating the imaginary part of the effective action with two different methods at one-loop order. Our result confirms that the effective action for the magnetic background has no imaginary part but the one for the electric background has a negative imaginary part. This assures that the monopole condensation is indeed stable, but the electric background becomes unstable due to the pair-annihilation of gluons.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figure

FFTF fuel story

The development and irradiation testing of FFTF fuel is reviewed