THE U.S. ACCIDENT TOLERANT FUELS PROGRAM — A NATIONAL INITIATIVE COMING OF AGE

摘要

In 2012 the U.S. Congress directed the Departmentof Energy’s (DOE) Office of Nuclear Energy to givepriority to developing enhanced fuels and cladding forlight water reactors to improve safety in the event ofaccidents in the reactor or spent fuel pools. DOEdeveloped a plan with a goal to insert a Lead TestAssembly (LTA) into a commercial light water reactor bythe end of FY 2022. Three of the leading commercialnuclear fuel vendors, in concert with several participatingcommercial nuclear utilities, are now seriously engagedin this initiative and have exceeded initial expectations byhaving met DOE’s goal this year, three years ahead ofschedule. The early successes of the ATF program aredue in part to a strong collaboration by the DOE nationallaboratories with both commercial nuclear fuel vendorsand the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This paperreviews the DOE-sponsored, industry-led ATF conceptscurrently under development and highlights thecontributions made by the DOE laboratories in support ofthese ATF concepts, including: 1) steady-stateirradiation testing in the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR)and High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR); 2) transientirradiation testing in the Transient Reactor Test Facility(TREAT); 3) fabrication process development andcharacterization of uranium silicide-based fuels, FeCrAlcladding, and SiC cladding; and 4) development ofadvanced fuel modeling tools for the analysis of ATFconcepts.