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

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

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.