Nuclear fuels technologies fiscal year 1998 feed materials baseline development summary report

Abstract

This document summarizes a portion of the work performed for the fuel fabrication process development task for the fiscal year 1998 (FY98) research and development (R and D) activities at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). It was determined through previous efforts that development work is necessary when new feed materials are introduced into an established fabrication process. The FMD Program decided to select a new UO{sub 2} source in FY98 for use in fuel fabrication R and D activities. The new source identified was UO{sub 2} powder derived from the Ammonium Uranyl Carbonate (AUC) process. Fuel fabrication activities to date have used Cameco UO{sub 2} obtained from Canada. The properties of Cameco UO{sub 2} differ significantly from those of AUC-derived UO{sub 2}. Although the AUC-derived UO{sub 2} material was used previously to fabricate the majority of the European reactor-grade mixed oxide (MOX) fuel, it is important to establish how it will interact with weapons-grade plutonium in terms of fuel fabricability. Furthermore, plutonium feed materials can be quite different (from a ceramics perspective) depending on the conversion process and processing parameters, and it is important to quantify the effects these differences may have on the fuel fabrication process. There were two main tasks included in this effort: (1) Develop baseline MOX fuel fabrication processing parameters for the AUC-derived source of UO{sub 2} feed material, using both surrogate CeO{sub 2} and prototypic PuO{sub 2} powders. (2) Fabricate MOX fuel using the baseline fabrication processing parameters, the new source of UO{sub 2} feed material, and an alternative source of PuO{sub 2} feed material. The experiments performed and results obtained from these Feed Materials Baseline Development activities are described.