Demonstration of remote fabrication for FBR MOX fuel at the PFPF

Takahashi, Saburo; Kikuno, Hiroshi; Shiromo, Hideo ; Kuba, Meiji ; Abe, Tomoyuki; Takeda, Seiichiro

Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) has been accumulating various experience and knowledge on development of MOX fuel technologies for more than 40 years since 1966. Plutonium Fuel Production Facility (PFPF) has introduced a fully automated and remote operation in 1988 as a pioneer in the world, based on the operational and technical experience obtained in the existing facilities. The PFPF has fabricated MOX fuel assemblies for a fast reactor "JOYO" and a fast breeder reactor "MONJU" so far. Through MOX fuel fabrication for JOYO and MONJU, many operational experiences such as a hold-up material problem have been gained. Based on the experiences, process equipments have been newly developed and a process technology has been improved. As the results, fully automated and remote fabrication technologies including easy contact maintenance of process equipments for FBR MOX fuel have been demonstrated in the PFPF on a large scale.