Accident-tolerant fuel is powering this nuclear reactor
David Wagman | September 12, 2019Westinghouse Electric Co. and Exelon Generation said they successfully completed a first-of-a-kind installation of EnCore Fuel at Exelon's Byron Unit 2 nuclear power plant in Illinois.
The accident-tolerant nuclear fuel was installed during a scheduled refueling outage.
The fuel rod assemblies contain chromium-coated zirconium cladding for enhanced oxidation and corrosion resistance and uranium silicide pellets. The fuel is intended to increase public safety through new materials, while improving plant economics through longer fuel cycles and enhanced flexible power operation capability.
The Byron nuclear station in Illinois. Source: Exelon GenerationWestinghouse developed EnCore Fuel as part of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Accident Tolerant Fuel Program. Westinghouse is currently working on an Accident Tolerant Fuel grant from the DOE totaling more than $93 million.
The DOE said that accident tolerant fuels use new materials that reduce hydrogen buildup, improve fission product retention and are structurally more resistant to radiation, corrosion and high temperatures. They could extend the refueling cycle from 18 months at present to 24 months or longer. They also could require roughly 30% less fuel.
Framatome, GE and Westinghouse are currently testing their accident tolerant fuels. The three companies hope to commercialize their fuels and deploy them to commercial reactors by 2025.
GE is working to develop Iron Chromium Aluminum (FeCrAl) alloys cladding, trademarked IronClad. GE is also developing a coating program for zirconium alloys, trademarked ARMOR, and the study of uranium dioxide-based ceramic metal fuels.
Framatome is developing chromium-coated zirconium alloy cladding with chromia-doped uranium oxide (UO2) pellets (Cr-Cr2O3). Framatome also will continue and expand development efforts on its silicon carbide cladding concepts. In July 2017, Framatome said that its lead fuel assemblies would be delivered to Southern Nuclear Co.’s Vogtle Unit 2 in the winter of 2019.
In addition to replacing about one-third of Byron Unit 2's fuel during the spring outage, work included a multi-million-dollar transformer upgrade project by replacing two main power transformers, which are used to step up the electricity leaving the site for transmission.
This seems more a publicity move than public safety.
There is so much nuclear waste now that cannot be disposed of without killing everything in our streams, oceans and us. An article yesterday explained that one holding company has so much radioactive water they are afraid of an unintentional nuclear reaction, while others have holding containers leaking into the groundwater.
I was hoping this article was about shifting to a thorium fuel. It is long lived mining waste product that could provide the same level of power, for pennies on the dollar, just not the waste that is used to make nuclear weapons. The only reason the oil producing countries wanted nuclear reactors.
With thorium reactors, if damaged there is no contamination. there is no contaminated waste disposal, the savings in the billions a year paid for waste storage alone would pay for the replacement.
In reply to #1
Randolph: I think you're talking about fast reactors, which I like too, but hear too little about. People seem fixated on thermal reactors, but the fast reactors are about 100 times better. And they can use for fuel the "waste" from thermal reactors. Also thorium and depleted uranium.