b'using a pressure differential. This system has been tested with several alloys producing several slugs, as shown in Figure 2.Following casting, a pulsed gas tungsten arc welding method was developed along with the loading hardware, as shown in Figure 3. Using this method of welding, the thin walled cladding tubes are joined to the solid endplug by melting the entire outer surface of the endplug. The welds zones are small enough that standard weld radiography will likely not be able to be used to detect weld flaws. However, two rodlets from a batch of ten were randomly selected and interrogated using micro-x-ray computed tomography, which showed the welds to be solid with no discernable discontinuities in the weld area. After welding, the surrogate fuel slugs were settled into the sodium and bonded. During fabrication of the previous AFC tests, settling and bonding were performed in batches of 5-6 rodlets, and rodlets were manually lifted and dropped in the furnace Figure 3. Welding and loading fixture to be used for FAST rodlet fabrication, shownmany times over the bonding cycle. before glovebox installation.174 2019|AFC ACCOMPLISHMENTS'