Year
1973
Abstract
The scale of plutoniura recycle should climb sharply in the next few years reaching a total of more than fifty reloads per year by 1980. Utilities involved will be responsible for the integrity of the mixed oxide fuel. The paper presents a series of quality assurance considerations which differentiate this fuel type from enriched uranium designs. The areas of design, manufacturing, quality control, and on-site procedures are handled. Particular attention is devoted to the particle size distribution of the PuOo agglomerates in the U0£ matrix. A variety of corrections are discussed appropriate for transforming the results of alpha radiography (or equivalent techniques) into a volume particle distribution.