Initial valuation of accident tolerant fuel for industry adoption: ATF Valuation 1.0

In the current electrical generation market in the United States, low natural gas prices, increasingly competitive renewable energy sources, social and political pressures, and high operating costs have placed significant stresses on the nuclear operating fleet. For nuclear plants to remain a feasible generation option, innovative technologies need to be implemented to improve plant performance and reduce operating cost. Advanced fuels, including accident tolerant fuel (ATF) concepts, have the potential to improve the economic performance of nuclear reactors as well as to provide additional operational flexibilities to better respond to variations in energy demand. ATF technologies have the potential to offer multifunctional performance improvements over current fuel designs through improved safety under accident conditions (including design basis and beyond design basis events), enhanced fuel reliability, efficiency, and performance during normal operations, while providing enhanced economic performance. In the deployment of ATF, timing to support the existing fleet is a critical element to permit its adoption and deployment. Since development of these technologies requires substantial investment, the associated costs would need to be amortized over the remaining life of the plants (including any subsequent license renewal period to 80 years). Because these plant operating decisions must be made many years in advance, this will require that the development, testing, and deployment of ATF must be achieved on a timescale that is much faster than has occurred previously. In this paper we describe initial industry activities that were conducted to assess the safety and operational capabilities of ATF and support the timeframe for development, licensing, and testing that would be necessary to achieve these objectives. These evaluations have been characterized as ATF Valuation 1.0. In a companion paper we provide results from subsequent detailed evaluations related to the benefits that ATF can provide (referred to as ATF Valuation 2.0). These additional evaluations include assessment of the benefits provided by ATF when combined with other mitigation approaches, in particular FLEX coping strategies and dynamic natural convection systems.