Heavy water reactor fuel element

摘要

Spacer plates are used to maintain the rigidity of a bundle of parallel fuel rods in the element which can be extracted from a replaced in a separator tube as an assembly. Each of these spacers has three sliding shoes around its edge which locate the assembly in the separator tube and in addition an empty fuel rod casing is placed in one of the outer positions which has a sliding spring pressing against the wall of the separator tube. The empty casing and the rods are detachably fitted to a suspender plate. The spacers are in skeletal form a minimize the volume of inert material in the reactor core and hence improve its efficiency.