Overview of accident-tolerant fuel R&D program in Japan

Yamashita, Shinichiro   ; Ioka, Ikuo  ; Nemoto, Yoshiyuki  ; Kawanishi, Tomohiro; Kurata, Masaki ; Kaji, Yoshiyuki  ; Fukahori, Tokio  ; Nozawa, Takashi*; Sato, Daiki*; Murakami, Nozomu*; Sato, Hisaki*; Kondo, Takao*; Sakamoto, Kan*; Kusagaya, Kazuyuki*; Ukai, Shigeharu*; Kimura, Akihiko*; Yamaji, Akifumi*

After the nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant, research and development (R&D) program for establishing technical basis of accident-tolerant fuel (ATF) started from 2015 in Japan. Since then, both experimental and analytical studies necessary for designing a new light water reactor (LWR) core with ATF candidate materials are being conducted within the Japanese ATF R&D Consortium for implementing ATF to the existing LWRs, accompanying with various technological developments required. Until now, we have accumulated experimental data of the candidate materials by out-of-pile tests, developed fuel evaluation codes to apply to the ATF candidate materials, and evaluated fuel behavior simulating operational and accidental conditions by the developed codes. In this paper, the R&D progresses of the ATF candidate materials considered in Japan are reviewed based on the information available such as proceedings of international conference and academic papers, providing an overview of ATF program in Japan.