An effort to improve U foil fabrication technology for fission Mo-99 target by using planar flow casting

Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) developed a new technology of directly fabricating U foil from the melt using a typical planar flow casting (PFC) process for fission Mo Target and provided some preliminary fabricated foil samples to various countries in connection with the IAEA CRP. The foils were examined to have some drawbacks of rough surface, thickness variety, and many pin holes. In order to complement the drawbacks of quartz tube crucible such as fragile-like break and melt-leakage through open slit nozzle, a new PFC system has been developed using a common graphite crucible and plugging system. The U melt is fed on to the rotating a roll through slit nozzle by self-gravity. The new equipment was designed and constructed successfully. An effort for optimizing all related parameters has been made. By using the optimized parameters, about 10 meters u foil having very thin thickness, which meets the target thickness of 130 μm and enough width more than 60 mm could be made. The thickness homogeneity set improved, due to the lower eddy flowing of the melt flow the self-gravity feeding system. (author)