Metallic Fuel Slug prepared by a Modified Injection Casting Method for Reducing Volatilization

摘要

Metallic fuels, such as the U-Pu-Zr alloys, have been considered as a nuclear fuel for a sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) related to the closed fuel cycle for managing minor actinides and reducing the amount of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuels since the 1980s. Management of minor actinides (MA) became an important issue because direct disposal of the long-lived MA can be a long-term burden for a tentative repository up to several hundreds of thousand years. In order to prevent evaporation of volatile elements such as Am, one of the main MAs, and improve the quality of fuel slugs, U-Zr alloy fuel slugs were fabricated through a modified injection casting method instead of a vacuum injection casting method, which is a method of fabricating a metallic fuel slug conventionally by modifying the casting process conditions.