Nitride fuel for Gen IV nuclear power systems
Review article, 2018

Nuclear energy has been a part of the energy mix in many countries for decades. Today in principle all power producing reactors use the same techniqe. Either PWR or BWR fuelled with oxide fuels. This choice of fuel is not self evident and today there are suggestions to change to fuels which may be safer and more economical and also used in e.g. Gen IV nuclear power systems. One such fuel type is the nitrides. The nitrides have a better thermal conductivity than the oxides and a similar melting point and are thus have larger safety margins to melting during operation. In addition they are between 30 and 40% more dense with respect to fissile material. Drawbacks include instability with respect to water and a sometimes complicated fabrication route. The former is not really an issue with Gen IV systems but for use in the present fleet. In this paper we discuss both production and recycling potential of nitride fuels.

Nuclear fuel recycling

Dissolution of nitrides

Gen IV

Nitride nuclear fuels

Production of nitrides

Nuclear fuel

Author

Christian Ekberg

Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Energy and Material

Diogo Ribeiro Costa

Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)

Westinghouse Electric Sweden AB

Marcus Hedberg

Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Energy and Material

Mikael Jolkkonen

Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)

Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry

0236-5731 (ISSN) 1588-2780 (eISSN)

Vol. 318 3 1713-1725

Subject Categories

Energy Engineering

Other Environmental Engineering

Energy Systems

DOI

10.1007/s10967-018-6316-0

PubMed

30546187

More information

Latest update

6/24/2019