Nitride fuel performance

Due to the character of the original source materials and the nature of batch digitization, quality control issues may be present in this document. Please report any quality issues you encounter to digital@library.tamu.edu, referencing the URI of the item.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 73-75).Issued also on microfiche from Lange Micrographics.The purpose of this work was to assess the potential of nitride fuels in the current context of the nuclear industry. Nitride fuels systems have indeed been for the past decade the subject of new interest from the international community. This renewal of interest can be explained by the strong potential that nitride fuel systems exhibit for applications such as advanced fast reactor technology, waste transmutation and nuclear space power. To assess this potential, a review of the nitride physical properties was performed in comparison to oxide or metal fuel properties. The potential applications of nitride systems were also detailed. A fuel performance computer code was developed to obtain a more quantitative comparison between nitride and oxide fuel. The oxide code FUELROD was taken as a basis for the new code. After modernization, nitride fuel property correlations were implemented to obtain a nitride version of the code. Using this new tool, a comparison between oxide and nitride fuels was performed to highlight their difference in irradiation behavior in order to confirm their potential