Developments in fabrication of annular MOX fuel pellet for Indian fast reactor A.K. Mishra1,#, B.K. Shelke1, M.K. Yadav1, Mohd. Afzal1, Arun Kumar2, G.J. Prasad2 1Advanced Fuel Fabrication Facility, 2Nuclear Fuels Group, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Tarapur- 401 502, India. #Email address:
[email protected] Abstract Mechanical rotary presses along with adoption of core rod feature were inducted for fabrication of intricate annular Mixed Oxide (MOX) pellets for Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR). In the existing tooling, bottom plungers contain core rod whereas top plungers contain a central hole for the entry of core rod during compaction. Frequent manual clean up of top plungers after few operations were required due to settling of powder in the annular hole of top plungers during compaction. Delay in cleaning can also result in breakage of tooling apart from increase in the dose to extremities of personnel. New design of tooling has been introduced to clean up the top plungers online during the operation of rotary press. It leads to increase in the productivity, reduces the spillage of valuable nuclear material and also reduces man-rem to operators significantly. The present paper describes the modification in tooling design and compaction sequence established for online cleaning of top plungers. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ International Conference on Fast Reactors and Related Fuel Cycles: Safe Technologies and Sustainable Scenarios (FR13), 4–7 March 2013, Paris, France 1. Introduction Indian Nuclear Power Programme is based on closed nuclear fuel cycle for efficient utilization of its nuclear resources. This strategy also enables waste classification and minimizes long-lived waste disposal problem.