Bachman & LaPointe, P.C.
Method for manufacturing a tube and a sheet of niobium-containing zirconium alloy for a high burn-up nuclear fuel
Disclosed is a method for manufacturing a tube and a sheet of niobium-containing zirconium alloys for the high burn-up nuclear fuel. The method comprises melting Nb-added zirconium alloy to ingot; forging the ingot at &bgr; phase range; &bgr;-quenching the forged ingot after solution heat-treatment at 1015-1075&deg; C.; hot-working the quenched ingot at 600-650&deg; C.; cold-working the hot-worked ingot in three to five passes, with intermediate vacuum annealing; and final vacuum annealing the cold-worked ingot at 440-600&deg; C., wherein temperatures of intermediate vacuum annealing and final vacuum annealing after &bgr;-quenching are changed so as to attain the condition under which precipitates in the alloy matrix are limited to an average diameter of 80 nm or smaller and the accumulated annealing parameter (&Sgr; A) is limited to 1.0&times;10&#8722;18 hr or lower.
Korea Atomic Energy Reserach Institute Korea Electric Power Corporation
Y C C G
Y02E C22C C22F G21C
additional inventional inventional inventional
Yong Hwan Cheol Jong Hyuk Byoung Kwon Kyeong Ho Younho Sang Yoon Myung Ho
Jeong Nam Baek Choi Kim Jung Park Lee