Improvement on the Manufacture of UO₂ Pellet

Recently, the ratio of the UO₂ powder made from dry process has increased obviously comparing those produced by wet process since the wet process has been gradually eliminated. Furthermore, the yield of the pellet is less than 85% during the UO₂ pellet production process. This causes the increasing tendency of scrap stocked and production cost. It is because the wet process method cannot adapt to the dry process powder. In this article, improvement on the manufacture of UO₂ pellet is researched. Firstly, To achieve the minimum defection of the pellet and residual volume of the grinding scrap, several variable processes such as the improving density of the green pellet, the redesigning cavity block size and the modified pressure maintain method were investigated. The optimum process is shown to be a much superior approach to improving the yield of the pellet, decreasing the amount of the scrap, the cost of production and contributing to further developing of pellet manufacturing technology.