First Fast Reactor Fuel Safety Test of 21st Century Performed by U.S and Japan
In part of a collaboration between the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) to develop and qualify fuels for fast reactors, the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) conducted the world’s first safety test on a high burnup fast reactor fuel in more than 20 years at its Transient Reactor Test (TREAT) facility.
Over the course of the next few years, the two agencies plan to perform several additional safety tests.
According to the DOE, Researchers recently performed transient tests on a high-burnup metallic fuel that was archived from historic irradiation testing at the lab’s EBR-II reactor.
The lab used a new test capsule specifically designed to test fast reactor fuels that uses a variety of sensors to monitor fuel behavior during testing.
The safety tests are the first of their kind in the world in more than two decades and will provide crucial new data to support future fuel development and qualification.
“The main ambition of this initiative is to test fast reactor fuels in their weakest state to better understand their limits and inform the development of improved designs,” said Colby Jensen, INL Technical Lead for Transient Testing. “Fast reactor fuel designs in the United States have not made a major leap forward since the era when the EBR-II program was shut down, and so the data from these tests of legacy fuel is highly valuable for advanced fuel designers today.”
