Spent fuel treatment Head-End process equipment development

Four primary pieces of Head-End process equipment were developed, qualified and installed by remote systems design engineers at the Idaho National Laboratory to prepare Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-II) spent nuclear fuel for electrochemical separations in a nuclear hot cell environment. The remote equipment falls into three categories; fuel assembly dismantling equipment, fuel element spacer wire removal equipment and fuel element chopping equipment. The fuel assembly dismantling equipment is designed to remove the outer hexagonal stainless steel tubing from the fuel elements. The equipment slits the outer tubing using a gas tungsten are welding (GRAW) process while introducing a dissimilar metal into weld pool. The dissimilar metal flows into the grain boundaries weakening the material and causing the stainless steel to crack. The equipment uses an automatic arc length control weld head to accommodate the warped or bowed assemblies and an automatic wire feeder to feed the dissimilar metal