Memento in the form of a lamp built around a CANFLEX fuel bundle

Artifact Number:

2018-255

Description

A desk lamp based on a truncated CANFLEX fuel bundle located within a pressure tube. The pressure tube is in turn nested inside a calandria tube. Note the garter spring between the pressure tube and the calandria tube. In a CANDU reactor the orientation of the fuel channels is horizontal. The lamp stands 76 cm in height and the wooden base is 26 cm in diameter. The truncated fuel bundle is 23.6 cm long (a standard CANDU bundle is 49.6 cm long) and measures a standard 9.9 cm in diameter. Note that counting the center support, which is normally a fuel element, the fuel bundle consists of 43 elements. The middle eight elements are 13 mm in diameter while the outer thirty-five are 11.5 cm in diameter. This memento was presented to A. Lane to celebrate his efforts in the development of the CANFLEX fuel.

Details

Keywords:

nuclear fuels; candu type reactor; retirement memento

Date:

1988

Associated artifacts:

See artifacts 2018-249 and 2018-254.

Notes:

The CANFLEX (CANDU Flexible) fuel bundle was originally conceived at Chalk River as an alternative to the 37-element CANDU bundle. The CANFLEX bundle was jointly developed starting in 1991 by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) and Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI). It is a dual-sized 43-element bundle (8 inner ring rods with a 13.5 mm diameter and 35 middle and outer ring rods with a diameter of 11.5 mm). It was designed to improve the thermal hydraulic performance of the current 37-element bundle by using patented heat-transfer enhancing buttons attached to the surface of the elements. Demonstration irradiation of 24 CANFLEX bundles with natural uranium fuel was performed from September 1998 to August 2000 at the Point Lepreau Generating Station. A similar demonstration irradiation program was also carried out from July 2002 to February 2004 at the Wolsong-1 reactor in Korea. The development of this bundle was discontinued because of a lack of interest by the CANDU Owners Group (COG). (De Groeneveld , 2018)