Development of coated particle nuclear fuel for terrestrial use and space exploration
Dr. Eddie Lopez Honorato
Senior R&D Staff, Group Leader Advanced Fuel Fabrication Group
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Coated particle nuclear fuels are made out of uranium bearing kernels coated with different layers of ceramics or metals. Traditional tristructural-isotropic (TRISO) fuel particles are made of three layers of pyrolytic carbon (PyC) and one of SiC produced by fluidized bed chemical vapor deposition (FBCVD). Although originally designed for high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, other coated particle fuels have been proposed for several future micro reactor designs for terrestrial use and space exploration. Furthermore, due to its versatility, coated particle technology is also being explored for other technologies such as nuclear fusion. The expanded envelope of operating conditions introduced by some of these new applications requires the fabrication of coated particles with a wide variety of kernel compositions (oxides, carbides, or nitrides), kernel sizes (200–1000 µm), coater kernel charges (from tens of grams to kilograms), and differences in the number of coating layers, coating thicknesses, and coating compositions (e.g., PyC, SiC, ZrC, W, ZrN, Zr, Mo, etc.). Each of these variables requires not only modifications to the deposition conditions but also the FBCVD system to produce coatings with optimal performance. In this seminar, we will discuss the history of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, as well as the R&D within the Advanced Fuel Fabrication Group, focusing on the innovation on coated particle fuel using additive manufacturing, image analysis, computational fluid dynamics, data mining, and machine learning.
Hosted by Dr. Manukyan
Zoom link: https://notredame.zoom.us/j/99165675577.