Enhanced Accident Tolerant Fuels for LWRS - A Preliminary Systems Analysis
The severe accident at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plants illustrates the need for continuous improvements through developing and implementing technologies that contribute to safe, reliable and cost-effective operation of the nuclear fleet. Development of enhanced accident tolerant fuel contributes to this effort. These fuels, in comparison with the standard zircaloy – UO2 system currently used by the LWR industry, should be designed such that they tolerate loss of active cooling in the core for a longer time period (depending on the LWR system and accident scenario) while maintaining or improving the fuel performance during normal operations, operational transients, and design-basis events. This report presents a preliminary systems analysis related to most of these concepts. The potential impacts of these innovative LWR fuels on the front-end of the fuel cycle, on the reactor operation and on the back-end of the fuel cycle are succinctly described without having the pretension of being exhaustive. Since the design of these various concepts is still a work in progress, this analysis can only be preliminary and could be updated as the designs converge on their respective final version.
- Research Organization:
- Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- DOE - NE
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC07-05ID14517
- OSTI ID:
- 1111499
- Report Number(s):
- INL/EXT-13-30211
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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