We manufacture highly reliable electrically heated nuclear fuel simulators which are designed and built to meet the particular requirements of each customer application. These fuel simulators are used extensively in our laboratory, but have also been supplied to customers in North America, Europe and Asia for use in their laboratories.

Indirectly heated nuclear fuel simulators have been designed and fabricated to represent various fuel designs, such as BWR fuel rods (heat flux >300 Watts/cm²) which have been used to perform Boiling Transition (BT) experiments in full scale (9x9 and 10x10) BWR fuel assemblies, PWR fuel rods which have been used to perform critical power testing in 6x6 fuel assemblies, and CANDU fuel bundles and strings which have been used to perform loss of coolant and emergency cooling experiments (at operating temperatures over 1100°C, with low heat flux). Sheath materials used include nickel and Zircaloy alloys. Thermocouples can be installed in the heater rods internally in the insulation, internally in dual layer sheaths, externally in grooves in the sheath, or externally with spot welded tabs. Axial heat flux profiles can be varied with great design flexibility.

Clean Room for Fabrication of High Quality Heater Elements

We have built many directly heated fuel simulations, particularly for CANDU experiments. These directly heated (Joule heated sheath) fuel simulators are usually made from high nickel alloy tubing and include internal thermocouples which can slide and rotate to monitor temperatures (and dryout) over most of the heater surfaces.

We have also designed and built specialty fuel simulators, containing hollow pellets (UO2 or other material) with the electric heater passing through the pellets, capable of very steep temperature ramps to over 1100°C (2000°F). We are continually developing new processes and investigating better materials in an effort to improve their quality.