General ILL seminar
organised by College 1
Wednesday, 18 June 2025 at 14h00
Seminar room 110-111, ILL 50, 1st floor
Fast nuclear reactors have the ability to close the fuel cycle (i.e., recycle spent nuclear fuel from light water reactors), as well as get rid of the long-lived actinides and fission products to reduce radiotoxicity. A variety of fast reactor designs across the world are being explored by small start-up companies to nation-state efforts, with most entities focusing on small modular reactors. Uranium-zirconium (U-Zr) alloys are one of the leading candidate fuels for these fast reactors. Currently, this fuel is not qualified for use within the United States. Advanced modelling and experimental efforts are ongoing to expedite this process which typically is a twenty-year endeavor. For example, physics-based modelling approaches are underway to eventually predict the microstructural evolution of the fuel within the reactors. This modelling approach requires an accurate U-Zr phase diagram. However, the U-Zr phase diagram is still not well characterized in the Zr-lean and Zr-rich regions. This talk will discuss methods that have been recently undertaken to introduce a new U-Zr phase diagram, including neutron diffraction, data mining, and machine learning.