Unification of reactor elastomeric sealing based on material

Abstract

The unification of elastomeric sealing applications of Indian nuclear reactors based on a few qualified fluoroelastomer/perfluoroelastomer compounds and standardized approaches for finite element analysis (FEA) based design, manufacturing process and antifriction coatings is discussed. It is shown that the advance polymer architecture based Viton^® formulation developed for inflatable seals of 500 MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) and its four basic variations can encompass other sealing applications of PFBR with minimum additional efforts on development and validation. Changing the blend ratio of Viton^® GBL 200S and 600S in inflatable seal formulation could extend its use to Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs). The higher operating temperature of Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) seals expands the choice to perfluoroelastomers. FEA based on plane-strain/axisymmetric modeling (with Mooney–Rivlin as the basic constitutive model), seal manufacture by cold feed extrusion and injection molding as well as plasma Teflon-like coating belonging to two variations obtained from the development of inflatable seals provide the necessary standardization for unification. The gains in simplification of design, development and operation of seals along with the enhancements of safety and reliability are expected to be substantial.