UO2 sintering furnace

ALD France benefits from long term experience of Degussa Company – one of the first manufacturers of the MOX furnaces and from the leading position of our parent company ALD Vacuum Technologies GmbH in vacuum heat treatment market to ensure you the righteous quality of its furnace for fuel production.

LWR Fuel Elements, made of UO₂ fuel pellets with about 5% of U-235, are the state of the art for the majority of the current production of nuclear energy.
ALD France manufactures sintering furnaces for the production of UO₂ pellets. ALD France has delivered about 30 furnaces to leading producers of nuclear elements such as AREVA, FBFC, ENUSA and Westinghouse.
ALD France's know-how is based upon the long experience of the DEGUSSA sintering furnaces. ALD France is offering pusher type furnaces, which guarantee the reliability and the process temperature homogeneity for high quality and productivity. These furnaces show an outstanding reliability with very low manufacture cost.
 

Based on this longterm experience, ALD France developed a new modular concept of a UO₂ sintering furnace with the following features:

• Flexibility, Adaptability
  The modular concept allows an adaptation of the production capacity by later adding sintering modules.
• Maintainability
  Each furnace module contains a casing with brick-lining and heating elements. Like a cartridge inside the cylinder, the casing can be remove very quickly and replaced by a new or revamped one.
• Higher Productivity
  By drastic reduction (80%) of the maintenance time (MTTR) in comparison with the former technology.
• Production of UO₂ fuel pellets from reprocessed Uranium requires only an additional radiation protection.

Learn more about UO₂ fuel production here or on Areva's website.