U.S. Plans for the Next Fast Reactor Transmutation Fuels Irradiation Test
- Idaho National Laboratory, P.O. Box 1625, Idaho Falls, ID, 83415 (United States)
- Los Alamos National Laboratory, P.O. Box 1663, Los Alamos, NM, 87545 (United States)
The U.S. Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI) seeks to develop and demonstrate the technologies needed to transmute the long-lived transuranic actinide isotopes contained in spent nuclear fuel into shorter-lived fission products, thereby dramatically decreasing the volume of material requiring disposal and the long-term radiotoxicity and heat load of high-level waste sent to a geologic repository. One important component of the technology development is actinide-bearing transmutation fuel forms containing plutonium, neptunium, americium (and possibly curium) isotopes. Metallic alloy and oxide fuel forms are being developed as the near term options for fast reactor implementation. There are limited irradiation performance data available on metallic and oxide fuels with high concentrations of Pu, Np and Am, as are envisioned for use as actinide transmutation fuels. Initial scoping level irradiation tests of such metallic fuels are underway in the INL's Advanced Test Reactor (AFC-1B, -1D, -1F and - 1H). Non-fertile and low-fertile metallic fuels in the AFC-1B and -1F tests have already been discharged from the reactor at 8 at.% burnup and are nearing the completion of postirradiation examination; performance of all the fuel alloys included in these tests indicated actinide-bearing transmutation metallic fuels are feasible. Similar fuel alloys continue to be irradiated in the AFC- 1D and -1H tests and are currently over 20 at.% burnup. Irradiation testing of metallic fuel alloys of U, Pu, Np, Am and Zr, with minor additions of rare earth elements meant to simulate expected fission product carry-over from pyro-metallurgical reprocessing, are planned for the AFC-2A and AFC-2B experiments, which will begin in late 2007. Irradiation testing of oxide fuels of different stoichiometries with high concentrations of Pu, Np and Am are planned for the AFC-2C and AFC-2D experiments, which will begin in early 2008. The proposed GNEP-1A, and GNEP-1B irradiation experiments in Joyo are a continuation of the metallic and oxide fuel test series in progress in the ATR and the metallic alloy irradiation tests in Phenix.3 They are designed as fast reactor test analogs of the AFC-2A, -2B, -2C and -2D experiments. The GNEP-1A and -1B experiments will consist of metallic fuel alloys of U, Pu, Np, Am and Zr, some with minor additions of rare earth elements meant to simulate expected fission product carry-over from pyro-metallurgical reprocessing, to be irradiated to burnup levels of 12-15 at.% burnup. The GNEP-1C and -1D experiments will consist of oxide fuels of U, Pu, Np, and Am with two different oxide-to-metal (O/M) ratios, which are candidate values for the fabrication process. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- American Nuclear Society, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 20979754
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Advanced nuclear fuel cycles and systems (GLOBAL 2007), Boise - Idaho (United States), 9-13 Sep 2007; Other Information: Country of input: France; 3 refs; Related Information: In: Proceedings of GLOBAL 2007 conference on advanced nuclear fuel cycles and systems, 1873 pages.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
AMERICIUM ALLOYS
FABRICATION
FISSION PRODUCTS
FUEL CYCLE
HEATING LOAD
HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTES
IRRADIATION
JOYO REACTOR
MATERIALS TESTING
MIXED OXIDE FUELS
NEPTUNIUM ALLOYS
OXIDES
PLUTONIUM ALLOYS
POST-IRRADIATION EXAMINATION
RARE EARTHS
REPROCESSING
SPENT FUELS
TEST REACTORS
TRANSMUTATION
URANIUM ALLOYS