FRM II and AREVA-CERCA common effort on monolithic UMo plate production

Since 2003 the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) is strongly engaged on the UMo fuel development program. Dispersive UMo fuel type was firstly investigated through collaborative efforts involving CEA, TUM and AREVA-CERCA. IRIS TUM irradiation and associated PIEs were presented during international conferences. The European consortium also studied the fabrication of UMo monolithic fuel plates during 2005-2007 and tentatively manufactured full size plates for the irradiation program IRIS V. As the program unfolded technical information were obtained and gathered with the international community. UMo foils were produced at laboratory scale and different methods to clad the UMo foils within aluminium were investigated. Based on these first results TUM and AREVA-CERCA have decided to pursue a common effort on the development of monolithic fuel plates with the purpose of minimizing the enrichment in use. Emphasis will be more dedicated to the foil and cladding package preparation and further studies will be performed in order to investigate various processing techniques to join the fuel foil with the cladding. As a complete new approach for the manufacturing of monolithic foils and for foil cladding the DC magnetron sputtering technique is investigated. A full R and D program was defined between TUM and AREVA-CERCA. This paper aims at presenting the program, discusses the selected options and first results will be presented. (author)