Materials specific work at Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe and in cooperation with the industrial partners ALKEM and Interatom for the development of nuclear oxide fuels for fission reactors

The fabrication of uranium-plutonium oxide fuel started in Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe and at ALKEM company to begin for the criticality experiments in the SNEAK reactor and subsequently for stationary fuel pin irradiations in the FR2, BR2, DFR, Rapsodie, Phenix and KNK II reactors. The production methods comprised first the mechanical blending of UO2 and PuO2 followed by direct pressing and sintering of the pellets, later the advanced methods such as optimized comilling and ammonium uranyl plutonyl coprecititation. The fabrication of pellets was described in the main, further the alternative fuel pin manufacturing processes by vibrational compaction and hot-impact densification were discussed. The first capsule and pin irradiations in the FR2 and BR2 reactors contributed to the assessment of the maximum operation parameters within the fuel pin development such as linear heat rating, cladding temperature and burnup. Subsequently, small-bundle and largebundle irradiations were made in fast reactors in cooperation with Interatom company in order to verify the specifications for the commercial fast reactor SNR 300. Milestones were the maximum burnup of 175 GWd/t metal, corresponding 18.6 % of the heavy atoms, obtained in one of the KNK II fuel pin assemblies, and the displacement rates in the cladding materials of 140 dpa NRT attained in the Phenix reactor. Higher implications gained later the stationary irradiations of defected mixed-oxide pins, the mild fuel pin transient operations, the local blockage experiments and the severe hypothetic accidents in the respective Siloe, HFR, BR2 and CABRI reactors. These experiments were made solely in international partnership. Further activities were the chemical analyses of solid residues and coprecipitations of irradiated mixed-oxide fuels in the head-end of the reprocessing. All these actions were coordinated in the then fast breeder project. Furthermore, irradiated fuels and fuel pins of other reactor types were investigated such as LWR-UO2, LWR-MOX, HTR and Cermet fuels. The most important results were also presented in this report