The development of Robust or Accident Tolerant Fuel (ATF) has become an international area of interest and effort in the last few years. Conceptually ATF would provide leap-ahead improvement in Light Water Reactor (LWR) fuel safety during beyond design basis accidents and commercial benefit to nuclear utilities. Accelerated by the severe accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, a variety of research, development and commercial analysis of ATF is presently underway globally. The insertion of ATF lead test rods (LTR) into a commercial PWR has been underway since 2019. This panel will present and discuss the state-of-art knowledge of ATF from the point of view of industry, government, non-profit research agencies, and academic representatives currently leading global ATF development. The significant challenges in development and implementation of ATF, such as large scale ATF fabrication, acceptance by nuclear utilities, the role of government and inter-government agencies in ATF research oversight, and the engineering and scientific challenges to develop ATF will be presented. The goal of this panel is to communicate the current understanding of the commercial and technical challenges faced in ATF development.


Advanced Fuel Development Panel

Division / Sponsors: 
Power Division & Nuclear Engineering Division (NED)

Power Conference
Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/POWER/POWER2020/volume/83747

International Conference on Nuclear Engineering
Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/ICONE/ICONE2020/volume/83761

POWER-ICONE - Virtual Conference

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