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60 Years of U: Perspectives on resources, demand, and the evolving role of nuclear energy
Recent years have seen growing global interest in nuclear energy and rising confidence in the sector. For the first time since the early 2000s, there is renewed optimism about the industry’s future. This change is driven by several major factors: geopolitical developments that highlight the need for secure energy supplies, a stronger focus on resilient energy systems, national commitments to decarbonization, and rising demand for clean and reliable electricity.
Jacob A. Hirschhorn, Jeffrey J. Powers, Ian Greenquist, Ryan T. Sweet, Jianwei Hu, Douglas L. Porter, Douglas C. Crawford
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 196 | Number 1 | October 2022 | Pages S123-S147
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2043539
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy’s Versatile Test Reactor (VTR) project is designing a new fast-spectrum test reactor. The VTR reference driver fuel design is sodium-bonded U-20Pu-10Zr (wt%) metallic fuel and HT-9 cladding. The BISON fuel performance code is being used to model the VTR driver fuel pin to evaluate the effects of differences between its design and the legacy designs that preceded it. This work summarizes ongoing efforts at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to benchmark BISON for VTR driver fuel analyses, including establishing metallic fuel performance code requirements for VTR applications and benchmarking BISON for VTR driver fuel analyses. Integral fuel pin predictions are compared to legacy calculations and post-irradiation examination data for 261 fuel pins irradiated at Experimental Breeder Reactor II and the Fast Flux Test Facility. The BISON predictions exhibit trends that are generally consistent with the legacy data. Burnup and temperature predictions were found to be more accurate than mechanical predictions such as radial cladding dilation, axial fuel elongation, and plenum pressure. Likely sources of error were identified for evaluation in future work.