Mixed oxide fuels testing in the advanced test reactor to support plutonium disposition

Abstract

An intense worldwide effort is now under way to find means of reducing the stockpile of weapons-grade plutonium. One of the most attractive solutions would be to use WGPu as fuel in existing light water reactors (LWRs) in the form of mixed oxide (MOX) fuel - i.e., plutonia (PUO{sub 2}) mixed with urania (UO{sub 2}). Before U.S. reactors could be used for this purpose, their operating licenses would have to be amended. Numerous technical issues must be resolved before LWR operating licenses can be amended to allow the use of MOX fuel. These issues include the following: (1) MOX fuel fabrication process verification, (2) Whether and how to use burnable poisons to depress MOX fuel initial reactivity, which is higher than that of urania, (3) The effects of WGPu isotopic composition, (4) The feasibility of loading MOX fuel with plutonia content up to 7% by weight, (5) The effects of americium and gallium in WGPu, (6) Fission gas release from MOX fuel pellets made from WGPu, (7) Fuel/cladding gap closure, (8) The effects of power cycling and off-normal events on fuel integrity, (9) Development of radial distributions of burnup and fission products, (10) Power spiking near the interfaces of MOXmore » and urania fuel assemblies, and (11) Fuel performance code validation. We have performed calculations to show that the use of hafnium shrouds can produce spectrum adjustments that will bring the flux spectrum in ATR test loops into a good approximation to the spectrum anticipated in a commercial LWR containing MOX fuel while allowing operation of the test fuel assemblies near their optimum values of linear heat generation rate. The ATR would be a nearly ideal test bed for developing data needed to support applications to license LWRs for operation with MOX fuel made from weapons-grade plutonium. The requirements for planning and implementing a test program in the ATR have been identified.« less