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Conference Article: Microspheres of UO2, THO2 and PUO2 for the High Temperature Reactor

Abstract

The production of high temperature reactor fuel, so called pebble fuel, was done in the eighties by a special vibrational dropping process to obtain as sintered UO2- or ThO2-microspheres, so called “Kernels”, with a diameter size of about 300 µm. These microspheres have been coated and embedded in carbon balls to get the pebble fuel. Since the early nineties BRACE is developing the processings of microspheres starting with sols and suspensions to produce Al2O3, ZrO2, HfO2 and Actinide oxide microspheres. Two main developments have been made: 1) the preparation of the feed solution (sol, suspension) and the solidification processing, and 2) the equipment, design, and electronic control have been completely changed.

A newly developed suspension process for actinide oxides and for metal oxides e.g. Al2O3, TiO2, SiO2, ZrO2, HfO2, CeO2, ThO2, UO2, PuO2 leads to cheaper production of as sintered microspheres.

The processing and the installations will be described and the experience of production will be shown.

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Reference:

Proceedings of the Conference on High Temperature Reactors, Petten, NL, April 22-24, 2002
Organized by HTR-TN in cooperation with the European Nucler Society (ENS) and the IAEA

International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna (Austria)

HTR-2002, pp:1-5