AFCI Transmutation Fuel Processes and By-Products Planning: Interim Report
The goals of the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI) Program are to reduce high-level waste volume, reduce long-lived and radiotoxic elements, and reclaim valuable energy content of spent nuclear fuel. The AFCI chartered the Fuel Development Working Group (FDWG) to develop advanced fuels in support of the AFCI goals. The FDWG organized a phased strategy of fuel development that is designed to match the needs of the AFCI program: Phase 1 - High-burnup fuels for light-water reactors (LWRs) and tri-isotopic (TRISO) fuel for gas-cooled reactors Phase 2 – Mixed oxide fuels with minor actinides for LWRs, Am transmutation targets for LWRs, inert matrix fuels for LWRs, and TRISO fuel containing Pu and other transuranium for gas-cooled reactors Phase 3 – Fertile free or low-fertile metal, ceramic, ceramic dispersed in a metal matrix (CERMET), and ceramics dispersed in a ceramic matrix (CERCER) that would be used primarily in fast reactors. Development of advanced fuels requires the fabrication, assembly, and irradiation of prototypic fuel under bounding reactor conditions. At specialized national laboratory facilities small quantities of actinides are being fabricated into such fuel for irradiation tests. Fabrication of demonstration quantities of selected fuels for qualification testing is needed but not currently feasible, because existing manual glovebox fabrication approaches result in significant radiation exposures when larger quantities of actinides are involved. The earliest demonstration test fuels needed in the AFCI program are expected to be variants of commercial mixed oxide fuel for use in an LWR as lead test assemblies. Manufacture of such test assemblies will require isolated fabrication lines at a facility not currently available in the U.S. Such facilities are now being planned as part of an Advanced Fuel Cycle Facility (AFCF). Adequate planning for and specification of actinide fuel fabrication facilities capable of producing transmutation fuels dictates the need for detailed process flows, mass balances, batch size data, and radiological dose estimates. Full definition of the materials that will need to be handled in the facility as feed material inputs, in-process fuel, scrap recycle, scrap requiring recovery, and by-product wastes is required. The feed material for demonstrating transmutation fuel fabrication will need to come from the separations of actinides from spent nuclear fuel processed in the same AFCF.
- Research Organization:
- Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- DOE - NE
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC07-99ID-13727
- OSTI ID:
- 911235
- Report Number(s):
- INEEL/EXT-04-02344; TRN: US0704477
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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