Feasibility study of oxygen getter for FBR MOX fuel; Selection of material and examination of loading method into a cladding

Morihira, Masayuki ; Segawa, Tomoomi 

The "FaCT project" is a program toward the commercialization of FBR cycle carried out in JAEA. High burn-up of 250 GWd/HMt at bundle peak is targeted in the project. To restrain the fuel cladding chemical interaction (FCCI) in a high burn-up, adoption of low O/M ratio pellets is chosen. Considering the difficulty of accurate oxygen potential control in a commercial scale electric furnace as well as the difficulty of keeping O/M ratio of sintered pellets under the high decay heat from the low decontaminated TRU MOX, it may be difficult to realize commercial mass production of low O/M ratio pellets. If so, excess oxygen released during irradiation should be absorbed by an oxygen getter not but in the matrix of low O/M ratio MOX pellets. Then MOX pellets with higher initial O/M ratio can be acceptable. In this research, a selection of oxygen getter candidates was carried out with the examination of their loading method in a cladding.