Russia Completes First Phase of Testing Accident Tolerant Fuel In MIR Reactor

Russian state-owned nuclear fuel company Tvel has completed the first phase of accident-tolerant fuel (ATF) testing in the MIR research reactor at the Research Institute of Atomic Reactors in Dimitrovgrad in southeastern Siberia. Two experimental ATF fuel assemblies were loaded into the reactor in January. Each fuel assembly contained 24 fuel elements with four different combinations of cladding and fuel matrix materials. After the first irradiation cycle, both assemblies were removed from the reactor. Tvel said preliminary examination of the assemblies, performed onsite by a team from the Bochvar Institute for Inorganic Materials, a Moscow-based Tvel research facility, revealed neither changes in the fuel rods’ geometry, nor damage to the cladding. Several fuel rods were extracted for further post-irradiation studies. The results will help to determine the optimal combination of materials. Tvel said in 2020 it is committed to expanding the testing program to irradiation in a commercial VVER-1000 reactor.

The nuclear industry has been aggressively developing different types of reactor fuels that are more robust and offer improved performance during normal and accident conditions. The goal is to begin deploying these game-changing fuels in the early to mid-2020s. ATFs can endure the loss of active cooling in a reactor core for much longer than current fuel, improve nuclear plant performance and reduce operational and maintenance costs