It was initially a General Electric Materials Test Reactor with plate-type fuel bundles, but was upgraded in 1967 to a 1MW General Atomics TRIGA ( Teaching Research Isotopes General Atomics ) reactor.
32.
Palo Verde officials first noticed a problem on March 22 when fuel assembly A7, one of 241 fuel bundles in the reactor core, could not be lifted out during a routine refueling operation.
33.
Federal regulators also are concerned about the failure of five control rods to fully descend into the reactor fuel bundles for a brief period when the plant was shut down Jan . 30.
34.
The 1, 500-pound uranium fuel bundle in Unit 2 could be dislodged as early as today or Tuesday, allowing a refueling operation to continue as scheduled at the nation's largest nuclear plant, Palo Verde officials said.
35.
Some nuclear scientists believe that so-called mixed-oxide, or MOX, fuel bundles, made from weapons plutonium and uranium oxide, will make an ideal fuel for Canada's unique Candu reactors, which the country vigorously seeks to sell abroad.
36.
If the temperature of the fuel bundles increases to the point where they are mechanically unstable, their horizontal layout means they will bend under gravity, shifting the layout of the bundles and reducing the efficiency of the reactions.
37.
A new fuel bundle design ( Low Void Reactivity Fuel, LVRF ) is being considered, which uses slightly enriched ( 1 % U-235 ) fuel pellets, within a CANFLEX 43-element bundle ( compared to the existing 37-element bundle ).
38.
In recent days, to avert damage and prevent pieces of the assembly from falling to the core's bottom, additional metal wraps were placed around the fuel bundle, and a metal box was placed under the structure, said Jack Bailey, vice president for nuclear engineering.
39.
APLHGR, being an average of the Linear Heat Generation Rate ( LHGR ), a measure of the decay heat present in the fuel bundles, is a margin of safety associated with the potential for fuel failure to occur during a Emergency Core Cooling System.
40.
The independence of the neutrons'energies from the nuclear fuel used is what allows for such fuel flexibility in a CANDU reactor, since every fuel bundle will experience the same environment and affect its neighbors in the same way, whether the fissile material is uranium-235, uranium-233 or plutonium.
