Development programme on minor-actinide-bearing blankets at CEA

Abstract

An experimental programme will be necessary to qualify the recent minor-actinide-bearing blanket (MABB) concept which involves the transmutation of minor actinides on a fertile UO2 support in a sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) with a heterogeneous recycling mode. This paper describes a development programme to study the behaviour of minor-actinide-bearing blankets under irradiation with the goal of qualifying the concept on a fuel sub-assembly scale according to a schedule that is compatible with the deployment of Generation IV SFR. This development programme can be divided into four main phases: fuel selection, feasibility, optimisation and qualification. An irradiation programme is drawn up for each of these phases, taking into account the manufacturing and irradiation means available at each specific period.