TRISO Fuel: Creating Tomorrow’s Nuclear Fuel Today by Optimising the External Gelation Chemistry of Uranium Kernel Production
About the Project
SATURN_Nuclear_CDT
Ceramic nuclear fuels have been used in nuclear reactors for many decades. More recently, coated particle fuels (CPFs) such as TRISO (tri-structural isotropic) fuels have been investigated, offering increased performance and accident tolerance. Referred to as “the most robust nuclear fuel on Earth”, each TRISO particle is the size of a poppy seed and formed of a uranium oxide fuel kernel encapsulated by 3 layers of carbon/ceramic-based materials which prevent the release of radioactive fission products under all reactor and post-reactor conditions. Rolls-Royce would like to develop CPFs for potential use in future applications such as Advanced Modular Reactors and High Temperature Gas Reactors.
Funded by the UK Government, Lancaster University has established a casting rig and capability to fabricate and characterise CPF kernels by a so-called “external gelation route”. This external gelation rig has been used to cast the first uranium oxide TRISO kernels at a university in over 40 years, and has been successfully operated at Lancaster for a number of years. Experience of the rig has indicated issues with process variable sensitivity leading to non-ideal kernel geometries and physical properties resulting in kernel failure during subsequent thermal processing. The proposed PhD project will explore these process variable sensitivities, leading to the identification of optimised process conditions for the reliable fabrication of spherical kernels in the future.
This project is a collaboration between Lancaster University and Rolls-Royce Ltd. Experimental work will be conducted primarily in Lancaster’s UTGARD (Uranium-Thorium beta-Gamma Active R&D) Lab
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