EB welding and quality control of nuclear reactor fuel rods at ASEA-ATOM

Fourteen years ago ASEA-ATOM chose EB welding for fuel rod plug/tube welds. This choice was made on the basis of 7 years of experience of EB-welding of fuel rods in a pilot plant. The specific reasons were the high quality and the high process yield, which are made possible by the great degree of controlability and reproducibility of this process and because the welds are suitable for QC inspection by an inline ultrasonic method which we developed at the same time. To date ASEA-ATOM has manufactured approximately 600,000 fuel rods with 1,200,000 EB-welds. The results have met expections as regards quality, process yield and service in BWR and PWR reactors. Descriptions are given of the automatic Sciaky EB welding machines, of the ultrasonic inspection equipment and of their process qualification. Some comments are made on quality and process yield