Development of high burn-up fuel with SiC matrix for gas-cooled fast reactor

ガス冷却高速炉用にSiCマトリックスを用いた高燃焼度燃料の開発

檜木 達也*; Park, Y.*; Park, J.*; 三輪 周平  ; 堂野前 貴子  

Hinoki, Tatsuya*; Park, Y.*; Park, J.*; Miwa, Shuhei; Donomae, Takako

高密度のNITE-SiC/SiC複合材の製造技術をガス冷却高速炉用高燃焼度燃料の製造技術に応用する。燃料密度50%を達成するために、棒状の燃料(110mm程度)を100-300m間隔で並べる必要があるが、こうした既存の技術はない。今回の研究により棒状燃料と同サイズの炭素棒を使うことで、均等な穴を加工することができた。また緩衝材となるSiCバッファ相も、SiCポリマー前駆体であるPCSとの配合比を調整した結果、形成に成功した。燃料間の幅は、200m程度に決定した。

Nitride fuel and oxide fuel are candidate for helium gas-cooled fast reactor to achieve thermal efficiency over 40%. The conceptual design of fuel, which consists of nitride fuel of around 50%, highly dense SiC matrix and porous SiC buffer layers is encouraged according to the eport for "Feasibility Study on Commercialized Fast Reactor Cycle System (FS)", Japan. However there is no technique to form dense SiC in the small gap between fuels with accurate arrangement of fuels. The objective of this work is to develop basic fabrication technique for the high burn-up fuel utilizing forming technique for highly dense NITE-SiC/SiC composites. The cylindrical fuel is proposed in this work instead of spherical fuel to achieve high dense fuel and accurate arrangement.