Energy Conversion and Management, Vol.49, No.7, 1928-1933, 2008
CERMET fuel behavior and properties in ADS reactors
Within the EUROTRANS Integrated Project, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (FZK.) and the Institute for Transuranium Elements (ITU) are joining their efforts to study the behavior of Mo-based CERMET non-uranium fuel for the ADS. Contributions include core safety calculations, and fuel property measurements and irradiation experiments. Safety studies for optimized EFIT core designs have concluded that, for the new low power cores of EFIT with a power class of similar to 400 MWth and a fuel power density of similar to 250 MW/m(3), the CERMET-loaded cores behave favorably and the design limits of the fuels were not violated. Mo-based CERMET fuel pellets and pins loaded with Pu and Am were fabricated for irradiation programmes which will start by mid2007 in PHENIX (France) and HFR-Petten (The Netherlands). The thermal diffusivity and specific heat of the CERMET fuels (loaded with Pu and Am) were the main properties measured, and the thermal conductivity was deduced. The results were used to prepare the safety report for the irradiation experiments. (C) 2008 Published by Elsevier Ltd.