Fuel Pool | Graver Technologies

At approximately 12, 18, or 24 month intervals each nuclear plant schedules a refueling outage to replace a portion of the nuclear fuel. The spent or used fuel still generates heat and radiation and must be handled and stored safely. The fuel assemblies that have been removed from the reactor are stored under water in the Spent Fuel Pool. Good water quality is important to prevent degradation and help maintain the integrity of the spent fuel assemblies. Spent Fuel Pool ion exchange systems—either Powdex® pre-coat systems or deep beds—are used in many plants. Graver provided the original Powdex resins for the pre-coat systems and today most use one of the Ecodex® mixed bed precoat products to simultaneously deionize and filter particulates, maintaining good clarity in the pool. Gravex® bead resins are particularly useful in the deep bed systems. Typical mixed beds were used for many years and are still useful today. The Spent Fuel Pool environment can affect resin degradation so we recommend a specialty Gravex mixed bed containing a high capacity, more stable cation.