Characteristics of pore formers in low density MOX pellet fabrication
Mizuno, Mineo; Haga, Tetsuya ; Sudo, Katsuo ; Takeuchi, Kentaro ; Okita, Takatoshi; Kihara, Yoshiyuki
Crystalline cellulose granulated to sizes from 70 to 100 micron was previously used as pore former (PF) to fabricate low density MOX pellets for MONJU. When sale of Avicel was discontinued, it became necessary to find a substitute PF. Then, small scale fabrication tests of MOX pellets with candidate PFs were conducted. Three candidate PFs, cellulose beads, CEOLUS and CELPHERE, were examined in the tests. The results are summarized below. (1) The CELPHERE gave MOX pellets with almost same density depression performance as pellets using Avicel, and standards deviation of the sintered densities of pellets was the smallest. (2) MOX pellets with CELPHERE had lower incidence of observable defects. (3) MOX pellets with CELPHERE had almost the same O/M as pellets with Avicel. (4) MOX pellets with CELPHERE had lower incidence of micro cracks. (5) The densification amount of pellets with CELPHERE was almost the same as that of pellets with Avicel. It was concluded CELPHERE was a suitable substitute for Avicel.