a Nuclear Fuel Complex, Hyderabad

Nuclear fuel assembly consists of large number of components. In a typical 500 MWe Pressurised Heavy Water (PHWR) fuel assembly consists of 1655 components in form of pellets, tubes, spacer pads, bearing pads, endcaps and endplates. As nuclear fuel has to perform under severe operating conditions, customers insist for 100 % inspection of all these components. Human based visual inspection for such large components is monotonous and expensive. In order to overcome these inherent drawbacks, vision systems were planned and developed indigenously for various visual inspection operations. The paper brings out details of various vision systems used for inspection of pellets, tubes, bearing pads, spacer pads and endcap weld evaluation. Nuclear Fuel Complex, Hyderabad, a constituent of Department of Atomic energy is sole manufacturer of nuclear fuel in the country. A typical 500 MWe Pressurised Heavy Water (PHWR) fuel consists of UO2 pellets and various zirconium alloy components viz. tubes, spacer pads, bearing pads, endcaps and endplates. NFC produces around 30,000 PHWR fue