The development of CVR coatings for PBR fuels
- Brookhaven National Lab., Upton, NY (United States)
- Advanced Ceramics Corp., Cleveland, OH (United States)
Particle bed reactors (PBRs) are being developed for both space power and propulsion applications. These reactors operate with exhaust gas temperatures of 2500 to 3000 K and fuel temperatures hundreds of degrees higher. One fuel design for these reactors consists of uranium carbide encapsulated in either carbon or graphite. This fuel kernel must be protected from the coolant gas, usually H{sub 2}, both to prevent attack of the kernel and to limit fission product release. Refractory carbide coatings have been proposed for this purpose. The typical coating process used for this is a chemical vapor deposition. Testing of other components have indicated the superiority of refractory carbide coatings applied using a chemical vapor reaction (CVR) process, however technology to apply these coatings to large numbers of fuel particles with diameters on the order of 500 pm were not readily available. A process to deposit these CVR coatings on surrogate fuel consisting of graphite particles is described. Several types of coatings have been applied to the graphite substrate: NbC in various thicknesses and a bilayer coating consisting of NbC and TaC with a intermediate layer of pyrolytic graphite. These coated particles have been characterized prior to test; results are presented.
- Research Organization:
- Brookhaven National Lab., Upton, NY (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- Department of Defense, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-76CH00016
- OSTI ID:
- 10108558
- Report Number(s):
- BNL-49703; CONF-931108-17; ON: DE94004233
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Fall meeting of the Materials Research Society (MRS),Boston, MA (United States),29 Nov - 3 Dec 1993; Other Information: PBD: [1993]
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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