Manufacturability estimation on burnable poison mixed fuel for improving criticality safety of HTGR fuel fabrication

Hasegawa, Toshinari  ; Fukaya, Yuji   ; Ueta, Shohei   ; Goto, Minoru  

Burnable poison (BP) credit concept has been proposed as a criticality safety measure for commercial high temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) fuel fabrication, so we estimated manufacturability of the BP-mixed UO kernel for the practical use of the concept. As a BP, boron, gadolinium, erbium, and hafnium are investigated. Boron mixed fuel kernels are fabricated by mixing boric acid powder with UO powder. In the case of the other BPs, BP nitrate powder is mixed with UO powder. In order to confirm that BP remain in the kernels after the heat treatment processes, thermodynamic equilibrium analysis was performed. Above 450C, boron would melt and vaporize during the heat treatment processes, so it was found that the boron mixed fuel kernel fabrication is difficult. On the other hand, it was found that gadolinium, erbium, and hafnium would change to solid oxides that do not melt and vaporize even at 2000C, and there was no problem with manufacturability of the BP-mixed fuel kernel.