High accurate thickness gauge system of zirconium and Zircaloy-2 layers for zirconium liner cladding tubes

In boiling water reactors, zirconium(Zr)-Zircaloy cladding tubes have been put into practice for lengthening a life cycle of the cladding tube. The cladding tube is a duplex tube with an inner layer of pure Zr bonded to Zircaloy-2 layer metallurgically. The assurance of the inner and outer layer thickness is essential for a reliability of the cladding tube. A new thickness gauge system in the manufacturing process has been developed to measure the thickness of each layer over an entire tube length instead of the conventional microscopic viewing method. This system uses an eddy current method and an ultrasonic method. In this paper, the quantitative analysis of undesirable factors in eddy current method and the signal processing method for accurate measurement are described. The outline of fully automated thickness gauge system is also reported