Impact of Accident-Tolerant Fuels and Claddings on the Overall Fuel Cycle: A Preliminary Systems Analysis

This paper presents a preliminary systems analysis related to most of the currently proposed enhanced accident-tolerant fuel and cladding concepts: fully ceramic microencapsulated fuels, uranium-molybdenum fuels, uranium-nitride fuels, uranium silicide fuels, silicon carbide cladding, advanced steel cladding, and molybdenum cladding. The benefits drawn from the implementation of demonstrated accident-tolerant fuels on the future development of nuclear energy generation as well as public acceptance are difficult to quantify but would probably be very significant. The potential impacts of these innovative light water reactor fuels on the front end of the fuel cycle, on the reactor operation, and on the back end of the fuel cycle are succinctly described.