Abstract
In 2012 the U.S. Congress directed the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Nuclear Energy to give priority to developing enhanced fuels and cladding for light water reactors to improve safety in the event of accidents in the reactor or spent fuel pools. DOE developed a plan with a goal to insert a Lead Test Assembly (LTA) into a commercial light water reactor by the end of FY 2022. Three of the leading commercial nuclear fuel vendors, in concert with several participating commercial nuclear utilities, are now seriously engaged in this initiative and have exceeded initial expectations by having met DOE's first goal in 2019, three years ahead of schedule. The early successes of the ATF program are due in part to a strong collaboration by the DOE national laboratories with both commercial nuclear fuel vendors and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This undertaking has recently been expanded to incorporate an effort to extend burnup from the current U.S. regulatory limit of 62 GWD/MTU and increase enrichment as necessary to support routine utilization of fuel at >75 GWD/MTU. This effort provides a critical economic incentive to accelerate the deployment of ATF technologies. This paper reviews the DOE-sponsored, industry-led ATF concepts currently under development and highlights the contributions made by the DOE laboratories in support of developing advanced LWR technologies, including: 1) developing and stewarding a world leading LWR technology development and qualification testbed; 2) providing industry with direct access to critical R&D facilities and expertise; 3) performing cross-cutting and confirmatory R&D on LWR technologies; and 4) development and demonstration of accelerated fuel development and qualification methodologies to increase the rate of technology innovation in the future. An overview of recent progress in these areas will be presented in this paper.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Proceedings of TopFuel 2022 Light Water Reactor Fuel Performance Conference |
| Publisher | American Nuclear Society |
| Pages | 90-97 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9780894487941 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2022 |
| Event | TopFuel 2022 Light Water Reactor Fuel Performance Conference - Raleigh, United States Duration: Oct 9 2022 → Oct 13 2022 |
Publication series
| Name | Proceedings of TopFuel 2022 Light Water Reactor Fuel Performance Conference |
|---|
Conference
| Conference | TopFuel 2022 Light Water Reactor Fuel Performance Conference |
|---|---|
| Country/Territory | United States |
| City | Raleigh |
| Period | 10/9/22 → 10/13/22 |
Funding
The last several years have shown significant progress toward deployment of ATF technology that could prove to be critical to the future sustainability of many commercial nuclear power plants in the U.S. The U.S. Department of Energy’s innovative ATF initiative is inspiring hope for a revitalization of the commercial nuclear power enterprise. Accident Tolerant Fuels under development by three industry teams (Framatome, General Electric, and Westinghouse), supported by the technical expertise and testing infrastructure at the DOE laboratories, and guided by early interactions with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in synergy with serious considerations of increasing fuel enrichment and burnup, offer the promise of never before realized levels of reliable fuel performance, enhanced safety, and economic benefit. construction projects. ATF development is being fuelled by an innovative initiative sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) that is driving a revitalization of the integrated research and development network needed to drive innovation within the commercial nuclear power enterprise. Three industry teams led by Framatome, General Electric (GE), and Westinghouse have been developing ATF concepts for several years under cooperative research and development agreements (CRADAs) primarily funded by the US DOE-NE. These concepts include mixes of both near-term and longer-term concepts. By 2019, all three industry teams were actively engaged in testing of their concepts in commercial plants using Lead Test Rods (LTR) [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. The original ATF program schedule, developed in 2012, aggressively proposed to meet this milestone by 2022. The remarkable success has emboldened the community to work towards an equally ambitious goal to deploy batch reloads of ATF by the mid-2020’s. This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under the Advanced Fuels Campaign. This manuscript has been authored by Battelle Energy Alliance, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC07-05ID14517 with the U.S. Department of Energy. Accordingly, the U.S. Government retains a nonexclusive, royalty-free, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for U.S. Government purposes.
