Development of production technology of ZrC-coated particle, 1 (Contract research)

Yasuda, Atsushi; Ueta, Shohei   ; Aihara, Jun ; Takeuchi, Hitoshi; Sawa, Kazuhiro

As the conventional SiC-coated fuel particle, the ZrC-coated particle is proposed as a nuclear fuel for the Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR) which is one of Generation IV nuclear reactors. Therefore it is examined by ZrC-coating equipment to get a ZrC-coating condition of C/Zr ratio 1.0, e.g., Zr and C atomic ratio equal to 1:1. Raw materials as surrogated kernel are Stabilized Zirconium Oxide (SZR) particle and PyC-coated SZR particle. For getting the basic production technology for mass production, the ZrC-coating parametric exanimation (coating gas flow rate, coating temperature and so on) is done up to 100 g as the equipment inventory. As the result of parameter examination, finally it could make the ZrC-coated particle with a thickness of ZrC layer of 0.030 mm and high quality in quantity of the particle inventory 100 g.