FCRD Transmutation Fuels Handbook 2015
- Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
Transmutation of minor actinides such as Np, Am, and Cm in spent nuclear fuel is of international interest because of its potential for reducing the long-term health and safety hazards caused by the radioactivity of the spent fuel. One important approach to transmutation (currently being pursued by the DOE Fuel Cycle Research & Development Advanced Fuels Campaign) involves incorporating the minor actinides into U-Pu-Zr alloys, which can be used as fuel in fast reactors. It is, therefore, important to understand the properties of U-Pu-Zr alloys, both with and without minor actinide additions. In addition to requiring extensive safety precautions, alloys containing U and Pu are difficult to study for numerous reasons, including their complex phase transformations, characteristically sluggish phase-transformation kinetics, tendency to produce experimental results that vary depending on the histories of individual samples, and sensitivity to contaminants such as oxygen in concentrations below a hundred parts per million. Many of the experimental measurements were made before 1980, and the level of documentation for experimental methods and results varies widely. It is, therefore, not surprising that little is known with certainty about U-Pu-Zr alloys, and that general acceptance of results sometimes indicates that there is only a single measurement for a particular property. This handbook summarizes currently available information about U, Pu, Zr, and alloys of two or three of these elements. It contains information about phase diagrams and related information (including phases and phase transformations); heat capacity, entropy, and enthalpy; thermal expansion; and thermal conductivity and diffusivity. In addition to presenting information about materials properties, it attempts to provide information about how well the property is known and how much variation exists between measurements. Although the handbook includes some references to publications about modeling, its primary focus is experimental data. Most of the data has been published elsewhere (although scattered throughout numerous references, some quite obscure); however, some data is presented here for the first time.
- Research Organization:
- Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC07-05ID14517
- OSTI ID:
- 1239879
- Report Number(s):
- INL/EXT-15-36520; TRN: US1600574
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
PHASE DIAGRAMS
SPENT FUELS
MANUALS
ACTINIDES
URANIUM ALLOYS
PLUTONIUM ALLOYS
ZIRCONIUM ALLOYS
TRANSMUTATION
FAST REACTORS
NUCLEAR FUELS
PHASE TRANSFORMATIONS
SPECIFIC HEAT
THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY
ENTHALPY
ENTROPY
OXYGEN
TRACE AMOUNTS
THERMAL EXPANSION
FUEL CYCLE
DOCUMENTATION
KINETICS
SENSITIVITY
SIMULATION
VARIATIONS
2015
FCRD Transmutation Fuels
Handbook