Abstract
Tristructural isotropic (TRISO) coated particle fuel is a promising fuel form for advanced reactor concepts such as high temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGR) and is being developed domestically under the US Department of Energy's Nuclear Reactor Technologies Initiative in support of Advanced Reactor Technologies. The fuel development and qualification plan includes a series of fuel irradiations to demonstrate fuel performance from the laboratory to commercial scale. The first irradiation campaign, AGR-1, included four separate TRISO fuel variants composed of multiple, laboratory-scale coater batches. The second irradiation campaign, AGR-2, included TRISO fuel particles fabricated by BWX Technologies with a larger coater representative of an industrial-scale system. The SiC layers of as-fabricated particles from the AGR-1 and AGR-2 irradiation campaigns have been investigated by electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) to provide key information about the microstructural features relevant to fuel performance. The results of a comprehensive study of multiple particles from all constituent batches are reported. The observations indicate that there were microstructural differences between variants and among constituent batches in a single variant. Insights on the influence of microstructure on the effective diffusivity of key fission products in the SiC layer are also discussed.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 257-270 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Journal of Nuclear Materials |
| Volume | 480 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 1 2016 |
Funding
The authors would like to thank Bob Morris and Charles Baldwin from ORNL for their efforts in AGR-1 PIE analysis and data interpretation. This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy , Office of Nuclear Energy , under the Nuclear Reactor Technologies Initiative in support of Advanced Reactor Technologies . A portion of this work was completed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison supported by the US DOE, Office of Nuclear Energy Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP), award number 11–2988.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Nuclear Reactor Technologies Initiative in support of Advanced Reactor Technologies | |
| Office of Nuclear Energy Nuclear Energy University Program | |
| U.S. Department of Energy | |
| Office of Nuclear Energy | |
| Nuclear Energy University Program | 11–2988 |
Keywords
- Coated particle fuel
- EBSD
- Microstructure
- Silicon carbide
- TRISO