Patent Number: 048428094
Section: summary

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The invention is related to storage of nuclear fuel rods and in particular to a rod arraying system which consolidates two fuel assemblies into the rack space of one standard fuel assembly. 2. General Background Storage space at nuclear reactor sites is very limited. This results in a need to be able to consolidate nuclear fuel being stored. A consolidation ratio of 2 to 1 can be obtained by disassembling two fuel assemblies and repackaging the fuel into one canister which will fit into the same rack space as a standard fuel assembly. Since there is seldom enough space at a utility to allow horizontal handling of fuel, the majority of existing designs and equipment directed toward fuel consolidation handle fuel in a vertical orientation. In most of these systems fuel rods are pulled or pushed from a fuel assembly in groups or bundles and put into a funnel which reconfigures the fuel rod bundle. Bundles may contain a full complement of rods for a complete fuel assembly or rods from a partial assembly. The funnel is a long device that accepts a rod bundle at one end in the same configuration as it is taken from a fuel assembly (rectangular pitch) and gradually changes the configuration of the bundle into a close packed triangular pitch rod configuration at the other end. The reconfigured rods are then fed into a canister for storage. This approach to fuel rod consolidation has met with limited success since it does not lend itself to quick recovery from an off normal situation such as a broken fuel rod. The funnel approach does not lend itself to other fuel related operations such as burnable poison rod consolidation and does not support fuel reconstitution, eddy current inspection, and recaging of damage fuel assemblies. It can be seen that a more versatile concept is needed in this area. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention solves the above problem in a straightforward manner. What is provided is a rod arraying device which uses the principle of single rod transfer. The handling of one rod at a time affords the most operational control and eliminates the chance of major portions of fuel assemblies getting hung up as a result of equipment failures, power failures, or rod breakage. The rod araying device works in conjunction with the consolidation canister. The rod arraying device has two scalloped plates with identical edge profiles. The plates are laid one on top of the other and offset in the front-to-back and side-to-side directions. The relative position of the plates is maintained by bearing guides which allow forward and backward cycling of the bottom guide by an air cylinder. The rod loading pattern provides gaps between rods that allow the rod arraying devices to hold each rod in position.