Industry-valued design objectives for advanced LWR fuels and concept screening results

With the exception of evolutionary refinements, the basic nuclear fuel system used in light water reactors (LWRs) has not changed significantly since implementation of commercial plants in the 1960s. Zirconium-based alloys have been used as the cladding material of choice over the last five decades and the fuel system has been optimized to a very high reliability at high burnups in normal reactor operations. The next generation of LWRs follow the same basic fuel design as existing plants. Thus, advanced fuel concepts that will operate in currently envisioned LWRs must consider the current fuel system and reactor paradigms. Significant improvements in fuel economics and performance will only be realized through the development of innovative revolutionary new fuel designs. As recent events at Fukushima have underlined, zirconium-clad fuel systems have vulnerabilities in severe beyond design basis accident scenarios. The Department of Energy (DOE) has long-established research programs to investigate the feasibility of advanced fuel concepts for LWRs. Many concepts have been developed through the DOE programs by DOE researchers, universities, small businesses and fuel vendors that have the potential to bring significant improvements to L WR performance and safety; however, most remain at an early stage of development. More recently, DOE has modified its research program to take a world leadership role in the development of accident tolerant fuel (ATF) by facilitating the collaboration of U.S. national laboratories, nuclear fuel vendors, nuclear utilities, industry research groups, and university researchers. The Advanced LWR Fuel Industry Advisory Committee (IAC) was established in March 2011 to provide advice and assistance to the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) in the development of advanced fuel concepts for LWRs, with the objective to increase the probability of concept implementation by the commercial power industry. The team consists of representatives from fuel and nuclear steam supply system vendors, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and several nuclear utilities. The team is not funded by DOE; participation is funded by each individual's organization. The views of the team represent an impartial broad consensus of the commercial nuclear industry. In July 2011, the IAC provided a set of industry-valued criteria to INL that could be used to better understand the relative viability of advanced fuel concepts for deployment in current and envisioned future LWRs. The criteria span a range of performance needs from the front end to the back end of the fuel cycle, ranging from manufacturability to reprocessing and including both normal and accident performance. The IAC initially used the criteria to review several pre-Fukushima proposed advanced fuel concepts, and identified a few that were promising from the perspective of cost-effective significant performance improvements in the near term (less than 10 years for a lead test rod or assembly). The industry-valued design criteria and metrics provide a practical approach to evaluating the relative probability and perceived benefits for proposed advanced fuel system concepts.