Accident Tolerant Fuel Concepts for Light Water Reactors

This publication provides a record of a Technical Meeting on Accident Tolerant Fuel Concepts for Light Water Reactors, held at Oak Ridge National Laboratories in 2014, to consider the early stages of research and development into accident tolerant fuel. Following the Fukushima Daiichi accident, a review of fuel behaviour has been initiated. Zirconium alloy clad fuel operates successfully to high burnup and is the result of 40 years of continuous development and improvement. However, under severe accident conditions, the high temperature zirconium–steam interaction can be a major source of damage to the power plant. This publication considers different ways to ameliorate this problem without sacrificing the good behaviour of fuel in normal operation. Options range from making the cladding more resistant to the high temperature steam oxidation through to completely new fuel designs with ceramic cladding and different fuel materials.