PROCESS LINE FOR MANUFACTURING FUEL ELEMENTS Russian patent published in 2003 - IPC

FIELD: nuclear power engineering; fuel element manufacture for nuclear reactors. SUBSTANCE: process line has sealing installation and charged-can weighing mechanism disposed in front of the latter and provided with single balance and single load-lifting device with vertical racks to receive charged fuel element can. Disposed between racks are indexing mechanisms that function to feed charged cans to vertical racks of load-lifting device and to take them therefrom while these indexing mechanisms are rotating. Weighing mechanism is provided with computer and programmable controller, The latter functions to stop the line in case weight of can or charged can is other than that specified including rejection of charged can by weight of fuel stack so as to eliminate variations in fuel mass and inadmissible local overshoot of energy release in operating nuclear reactor. EFFECT: provision for automatic control and rejection of charged cans, reduced labor consumption for servicing electron-beam plug-to-can welding units. 2 cl, 3 dwg