Abstract
A summary of activities around concept development, design, manufacturing, and early irradiation testing of a novel coated fuel particle, uranium nitride tristructural-isotropic fuel is provided. This fuel particle offers significantly higher uranium density over historic manifestations of coated fuel particles and may be more optimal for a range of advanced reactor applications. After reviewing the design process, steps involving production of this fuel form are discussed. Low burnup irradiation data on this fuel particle are now available, indicating that performance metrics have been met to date based on the original design expectations.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 152034 |
| Journal | Journal of Nuclear Materials |
| Volume | 531 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Apr 1 2020 |
Funding
This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy (DOE). The US government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for US Government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan).This paper is dedicated to the memories of Mattison Ferber and John Henry, Jr. Matt performed the first finite element structural analysis of the fuel particle and John converted the first batch of UN kernels from the sol-gel feedstock at ORNL in 2013 and 2014, respectively. Long-term development of this new coated fuel particle was made possible by leadership and support of Frank Goldner at US DOE and two AFC National Technical Directors, Jon Carmack and Steven Hayes. A multitude of staff members at ORNL contributed to this development process; prominent among those are Lance Snead, Rodney Hunt, Jack Collins, Terrence Lindemer, Theodore Besmann, Michael Trammell, Jake McMurray, James Kiggans, John Hunn, Grant Helmreich, Kory Linton, Christian Petrie, Daniel Schappel, Alicia Raftery, Robert Morris, Rachel Seibert, Tyson Jordan, and Charles Baldwin. Andrew Nelson, Tyler Gerczak, and Nicholas Brown provided valuable comments on the manuscript. The work was supported by the AFC under DOE-NE. A portion of this research used resources at HFIR, a DOE Office of Science User Facility operated by ORNL. This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy (DOE). The US government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for US Government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan ( http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan ). This paper is dedicated to the memories of Mattison Ferber and John Henry, Jr. Matt performed the first finite element structural analysis of the fuel particle and John converted the first batch of UN kernels from the sol-gel feedstock at ORNL in 2013 and 2014, respectively. Long-term development of this new coated fuel particle was made possible by leadership and support of Frank Goldner at US DOE and two AFC National Technical Directors, Jon Carmack and Steven Hayes. A multitude of staff members at ORNL contributed to this development process; prominent among those are Lance Snead, Rodney Hunt, Jack Collins, Terrence Lindemer, Theodore Besmann, Michael Trammell, Jake McMurray, James Kiggans, John Hunn, Grant Helmreich, Kory Linton, Christian Petrie, Daniel Schappel, Alicia Raftery, Robert Morris, Rachel Seibert, Tyson Jordan, and Charles Baldwin. Andrew Nelson, Tyler Gerczak, and Nicholas Brown provided valuable comments on the manuscript. The work was supported by the AFC under DOE-NE . A portion of this research used resources at HFIR, a DOE Office of Science User Facility operated by ORNL.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| DOE Public Access Plan | |
| DOE-NE | |
| US Department of Energy | |
| U.S. Department of Energy | |
| Office of Science | |
| Oak Ridge National Laboratory | |
| Agriculture Funding Consortium | |
| Association francophone de comptabilité |