New fuel test started in HFR Petten

This month a new irradiation experiment on the behavior of nuclear fuel has started in the High Flux Reactor in Petten.

With the new measurement technique, data is collected on the fissile material which can be used to develop new fuels and to optimize the efficiency of existing nuclear fuels.

In the research that has started two types of fuel are investigated: in Fuel Creep II the fuel samples are made from uranium oxide, in the INSPYRE capsule MOX fuel is examined which is a mixture of uranium oxide and plutonium oxide.

MOX is considered as a fuel for future fast reactors.

Each of the experiments contains six fuel samples, with three different compositions.

Reactor fuel needs to be safe under any (also extreme) circumstances in a nuclear reactor.

The fissile material in the reactor is exposed to a combination of a high neutron dose and high temperature.

It is therefore important to understand the effect of this on the quality and behavior of the fuel.

When refined measurement techniques, such as the one developed by NRG, become available it is possible to study separate processed that occur in the fuel in detail.

The first results of the research project are expected in a few months’ time, the whole program will be finished in 2022.

The generated data is made available to the partners in the INSPYRE-consortium, which is part of the European Horizon 2020 project.

Modelers are then going to use the data to update and improve current Fuel Performance Codes; the codes that are used to predict the behavior of fuel during irradiation.

 

NRG Press Release