Advanced burner reactors are designed to reduce the amount of long-lived radioactive isotopes that need to be disposed of as waste. The input feedstock for creating advanced fuel forms comes from either recycle of used light water reactor fuel or recycle of fuel from a fast burner reactor. Fuel for burner reactors requires novel fuel types based on new materials and designs that can achieve higher performance requirements (higher burn up, higher power, and greater margins to fuel melting) than yet achieved. One promising strategy to improved fuel performance is the manufacture of metal or ceramic scaffolds which are designed to allow for a well-defined placement of the fuel into the host, and this in a manner that permits greater control than that possible in the production of typical CERMET fuels. The performed research focused on the design and manufacture of such novel fuel types. The chosen manufacturing route was freeze-casting, a form of directional solidification processing also known as ice-templating, which ideally lends itself to the processing of both metals and ceramics and enables us to establish and explore a range of flexible and controllable fuel pellet designs. Two new fuel pellet designs investigated were: 1) Metal honeycomb structures as the basis of a CERMET fuel or a purely metallic fuel and 2) Ceramic honeycomb structures as the basis of an inert matrix fuel (IMF) form or a form for containing isotopes targeted for geologic disposal The metal and ceramic honeycomb scaffolds were designed to serve as the housing for infiltration with metallic or ceramic nuclear fuel slurries or powders. While other compositions were tested, the project, focused on stainless steel 316L and A1203 to create porous freeze-cast metal and ceramic scaffolds. The loading of the scaffolds with fuel was successfully explored using ceria powders as surrogates for uranium dioxide and silver solders and brazing alloys for infiltration experiments as surrogates for metal fuel.
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