Technical Meeting on Advances in Nuclear Fuel Fabrication Technologies for Power Reactors

Introduction

For decades the IAEA has supported Member States in improving fuel fabrication technology and maintaining it in optimal state to produce reliable fuels for power reactors. In the early 1980’s, the IAEA has collaborated with Member States to present guidebooks on quality control (QC) of power reactor fuels based on practical experience of nuclear fuel fabrication. Since 1980’s, the IAEA has frequently organized Technical Meetings or equivalent to foster the exchange of information on advances in fabrication technology for power reactor fuels.

In the last decade, fuel communities in Member States have achieved several advancements in fuel fabrication technology to support reliability, economics and safety of power reactor fuels, as demonstrated by automated processes, QA/QC technology improvements.

In the coming decade, more improvements are expected from the ongoing and future work, for example, deployment of High Assay Low Enriched Uranium (HALEU) fuel, deployment of accident tolerant and advanced technology fuels (ATFs) and use of reprocessed uranium fuel in light water reactors (LWRs); adaptation of new technology (such as computer-aided technology, 3-D printing technology, Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, Nano technology); deployment of fuels for LWR-type small modular reactors (SMRs) and for fast reactor-type SMRs; mass production of coated particle fuels for modular gas cooled reactors.

Parallelly, maintaining a good expertise in fuel fabrication technology has become a critical issue because of staff ageing and loss of knowledge due to staffing natural reduction.

Recognizing the importance of these circumstances, a Technical Meeting on the “Technical Challenges and Advances in Fuel Fabrication for Water Reactors: Recent Experiences and Future Prospects” was organized virtually on 8-11 November 2021, in order to provide a platform to facilitate the exchange of information on recent experience, and on-going and future activities in fuel fabrication technology. Contributed presentations were unfortunately not numerous enough to comprehensively cover all topics of interest. Therefore, the participants of the Technical Meeting and international experts advised the Scientific Secretary that another Technical Meeting would be necessary to collect more information on recent achievements in fuel fabrication technology before a documentation on the same subject could be initiated.

Objectives

The purpose of the event is to facilitate the exchange of up-to-date information on nuclear fuel fabrication technologies for operating and innovative power reactors.