| Abstract Scope |
Nuclear fuel development brings together several fundamental disciplines to design, fabricate, test, and characterize complex materials to meet challenging performance requirements. A detailed understanding of material properties as a function of temperature and irradiation damage is necessary to predict fuel performance. Fuel fabrication employs high temperature processes at industrial scales, and the impact of processing variables on fuel performance must be understood. Finally, determination of fuel design limits and failure modes demands coupling of neutronic and material performance models. This talk will present contemporary challenges in nuclear fuel development specific to solid state chemistry, thermodynamics, and transport phenomena. Specific examples will include development of non-oxide fuel forms for water cooled reactors, optimization of packing fraction and matrix design for dispersion and coated particle architectures, evaluation of fission product thermochemistry for carbide and nitride fuels, and finally assessment of factors limiting fuel service to very high burnups. |