Advanced Fuel/Cladding Testing Capabilities in the ORNL High Flux Isotope Reactor

The ability to test advanced fuels and cladding materials under reactor operating conditions in the United States is limited. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) and the newly expanded post-irradiation examination (PIE) capability at the ORNL Irradiated Fuels Examination Laboratory provide unique support for this type of advanced fuel/cladding development effort. The wide breadth of ORNL's fuels and materials research divisions provides all the necessary fuel development capabilities in one location. At ORNL, facilities are available from test fuel fabrication, to irradiation in HFIR under either thermal or fast reactor conditions, to a complete suite of PIEs, and to final product disposal. There are very few locations in the world where this full range of capabilities exists. New testing capabilities at HFIR have been developed that allow testing of advanced nuclear fuels and cladding materials under prototypic operating conditions (i.e., for both fast-spectrum conditions and light-water-reactor conditions). This paper will describe the HFIR testing capabilities, the new advanced fuel/cladding testing facilities, and the initial cooperative irradiation experiment that begins this year.