Accident Tolerant Fuels (ATF) for present operating reactors
All light water reactors (LWRs) around the world today are using fuel systems comprised of uranium oxide (UO2) within a zirconium-based alloy cladding. Some reactors use uranium-plutonium oxide fuels, which are also known as mixed oxide (MOX) fuels. The oxide fuel-zircaloy system has been optimised over many decades and performs very well under normal operating conditions and anticipated transients. However, because of the highly exothermic, auto-cathalitic zirconium-steam reactions above 1200°C, which can occur under some low frequency accidents – when core cooling is temporarily lost and part of the core is uncovered – low probability accidents may lead to an excess generation of heat and hydrogen, resulting in undesirable core damage.
Although relatively small scale Accident Tolerant Fuel R&D programs were existing under the US -DOE guidance in 2009, the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, and the events that followed at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, greatly expanded global interest in exploring fuels with enhanced performance during such rare events, with the ATF acronym as Accident Tolerant Fuel development programmes “exploding” in available funding, size and efforts in many research institutions and industry teams. The 2023 European Taxonomy requirements also explicitly demanded for nuclear reactors to be fueled with Accident Tolerant Fuels.
While there is broad consensus that a new fuel system alone is insufficient to mitigate accident consequences and full tolerance to severe accident conditions seems rather utopic, fuel in combination with other systems may provide some relief in responding to such rare events, while providing additional benefits during more frequent events and/or normal operations. The recent mindset therefore seems to evolve towards ATF as Advanced Technology Fuels with improving safety margins and improved thermo-mechanical performance.
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Speaker
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Joris Van den Bosch (SCK CEN)Since April 2023 Joris Van den Bosch is appointed as Director of the Institute for Nuclear Energy Technology at SCK CEN. He is also guest lecturer at Ghent University on Corrosion and Irradiation Damage, Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering.
He graduated in 2004 from Ghent University as civil engineer in Materials Science Engineering. In 2008, he obtained his PhD in Materials Science and Engineering also at Ghent University in collaboration with SCK CEN where he exercised the function of Structural Materials Research Engineer. From 2009 until 2010, he did a Post-doc on materials under extreme environments at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the United States. From 2010 -2014 he took up the position of R&D Manager at SCK CEN, building out the R&D on coolant chemistry for MYRRHA.
In 2014, he changed the course of his career and followed a Master of Business Administration (MBA) at the IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain and gained more in-depth knowledge in Business and Finance. In 2015, he did an MBA summer internship at Arcelor Mittal Flat Carbon Europe in Luxemburg. In 2016, he was the R&D Manager, Business Development at Lead Cold Reactors in Stockholm, Sweden (part time during full time MBA). In 2017 and 2018, he was Integration/Change Manager for a Private Equity fund, EXIN working on change management and integration of acquisitions in the bank and insurance industry.
In 2018, he decided to return to the nuclear R&D sector as Stakeholder Manager for the BR2 reactor at SCK CEN where he focused on the portfolio of experiments. In 2022, he was appointed Head of Business Development, responsible for the broader portfolio of the SCK CEN.
With the appointment of the new Director General in 2023 and under the new strategic plan “Exploring2040”, Joris Van den Bosch was appointed as Director for the Institute on Nuclear Energy Technology, focusing on the market oriented valorization of SCK CEN’s nuclear energy related expertise