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Securing the advanced reactor fleet
Physical protection accounts for a significant portion of a nuclear power plant’s operational costs. As the U.S. moves toward smaller and safer advanced reactors, similar protection strategies could prove cost prohibitive. For tomorrow’s small modular reactors and microreactors, security costs must remain appropriate to the size of the reactor for economical operation.
Hirokazu Ohta, Takanari Ogata, Dimitrios Papaioannou, Vincenzo V. Rondinell, Marc Masson, Jean-Luc Paul
Nuclear Technology | Volume 190 | Number 1 | April 2015 | Pages 36-51
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT14-50
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An irradiation experiment on minor actinide (MA)-bearing uranium-plutonium-zirconium (U-Pu-Zr) alloys, in which contamination by rare earth (RE) elements was considered, was performed up to ~2.5 at. %, ~7 at. %, and ~10 at. % burnups in the Phenix fast reactor. All the irradiated metal fuel pins were subjected to nondestructive tests such as cladding profilometry and gamma spectroscopy. Then, cross-sectional metallography of the low-burnup and medium-burnup fuel alloys was performed, and the redistribution of the fuel matrix constituents—U, Pu, and Zr—in the low-burnup fuels was analyzed by energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. As a result, the irradiation growth of MA-rich and RE-rich precipitates was observed by comparing the low-burnup and medium-burnup fuels. From the postirradiation examinations carried out so far, it was confirmed that the irradiation swelling, the cross-sectional structures, and the migration of matrix constituent in metal fuels containing 5 wt% or less MAs and REs are almost the same as those in conventional U-Pu-Zr fuels.