Volatile species retention during metallic fuel casting

Abstract

Metallic nuclear fuels are candidate transmutation fuel forms for advanced fuel cycles. Through the operation of the Experimental Breeder Reactor II metallic nuclear fuels have been shown to be robust and easily manufactured. However, concerns have been raised concerning loss of americium during the casting process because of its high vapor pressure. In order to address these concerns a gaseous diffusion model was developed and a series of experiments using both manganese and samarium as surrogates for americium were conducted. The modeling results showed that volatility losses can be controlled to essentially no losses with a modest overpressure. Experimental results also showed volatile species retention down to no detectable losses through overpressure, and although the loss values varied from the model results the same trend was seen. Based on these results it is very probable that americium losses through volatility can be controlled to no detectable losses through application of a modest overpressure during casting.