System and process for production and collection of radioisotopes
AssigneeWestinghouse Electric Corp.
InventorMichael D. Heibel
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A means for installing material, through a fuel assembly instrument thimble insert, into the existing instrument thimbles in nuclear fuel assemblies for the purpose of allowing the material to be converted to commercially valuable quantities of desired radioisotopes during reactor power operations during a remainder of a fuel cycle and removing the radioisotopes from the core through the reactor flange opening once the fuel assemblies have been removed for refueling. The invention also describes methods that can be used to harvest the irradiated material so it can be packaged for transportation from the reactor to a location where the desired radioisotope(s) can be extracted from the fuel assembly instrument thimble insert.
Claims7
A nuclear fuel assembly flux thimble insert comprising:
- an elongated tubular housing having an axis along its elongated dimension,
- the elongated tubular housing being
- closed at a forward end and
- capped at a rearward end
- to form a target specimen chamber there between within an interior of the elongated tubular housing,
- the elongated tubular housing being sized to slide within an instrument thimble of a nuclear fuel assembly,
- with the rearward end structured to be driven by a drive cable of an existing moveable in-core detector system;
- and
- an elongated target specimen captured between a forward axial position plug and a rear axial position plug,
- wherein the axial position plugs extend across the interior of the elongated tubular housing,
- wherein the axial position plugs are structured to seat against an interior wall of the elongated tubular housing
- to hold the target specimen at a preselected axial position within the interior of the elongated tubular housing,
- wherein the target specimen is nuclear reactor transmutable to produce at least one commercial radioisotope.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.