The UMo Powder Production Process of UMo-Al Dispersion Fuel for Research Reactor has been Studied

Development of UMo-Al dispersion fuel with low enrichment uranium (<20%U-235) is chosen because UMo has high density (± 16.4 g/cm3), a relatively large range of γ phase and easily reprocessed. Using UMo alloy as nuclear fuel, uranium density can be increased until 9.0 g/cm3, is higher than that of U3Si2-Al fuel that has only maximum Uranium density 6.0 g/cm3. Because of ductility of UMo alloy, thus exact and economic powder production method is needed. Some powder production methods are mechanical crushing (milling, grinding, etc), cryogenic mechanical crushing, atomization, and Hydride-Dehydride. The mechanical crushing and cryogenic mechanical crushing methods are difficult to be performed, time consuming and have high impurity products. However, atomization and hydride-dehydride methods are performed easily, fast and have low impurity products. The product of atomization process is spherical and uniform shape, but, another processes have irregular shape. The evaluation result of some methods showed that hydride-dehydride and atomization methods are more suitable for producing UMo powder than that of another methods. (author)