Improving the production of hexahedral casing pipe for the storage of spent nuclear fuel

摘要

At nuclear power plants, spent reactor assemblies are loaded in holding tanks for intermediate storage. For maximum sealing of the spent fuel, it is expedient to use protective casings that retard the neutron radiation and permit (2-3)-fold reduction in the distance between assemblies. This is important for VVER-1000 reactors, whose active zone consists of 153 fuel cartridges. In the 1980s, research on boron steel considerably expanded, along with its application in the nuclear power industry, because the neutron-capture cross section of boron is 300 times that of iron. Accordingly, corrosion-resistant austenitic, chromomanganese, low-carbon, and ferritic steel alloyed with boron has been developed for the nuclear industry. In the Soviet Union, hot-rolled 04Kh14T3R1F-VI (ChS 82-VI), 04Kh14T3R1F-PT (ChS 82-PT), and 04Khl4T3RlF-PSh (ChS 82-PSh) steel tube (288 X 11 mm) went into production for use in commercial hexahedral casing tube of dimensions 257 x 6 x 4300 mm, in accordance with Technical Specifications TU 14-242-275-89; the steel is smelted in vacuum induction and plasma furnaces, with subsequent electroslag remelting [5]. A sample chemical composition of the steel might be (mass percent): C 0.02-0.06 Si < = 0.5 Cr 13.0-16.0 B 1.3-1.8 Ti 2.3-3.5 V 0.15-0.3 Mn < = 0.5 Al < = 0.05 Ni < = 0.02 P < = 0.03.