[en] Laser welding and furnace brazing techniques have been used to join subassemblies for fuel rod simulators (FRSs) that have survived up to 100 h steady-state operation at 700 to 1100⁰C cladding temperatures and over 5000 thermal transients, ranging from 10 to 100⁰C/s. A pulsed-laser welding procedure uses small-diameter filler wire to join one end of a resistance heating element to a tubular conductor. The other end of the heating element is laser welded to an end plug, which in turn is welded to a central conductor. Before these welding operations the intermediate material conductor (either tubular or rod) are vacuum brazed to matching copper leads. On room-temperature tensile testing, 10 of 11 brazements between copper and nickel rods failed in the copper rather than the brazement