The development of metallic nuclear fuels for transmutation applications: Materials challenges

Metallic alloys show great potential to serve as transmutation fuels that could be used to burn long-lived and high-heat-producing minor actinides and fission products in nuclear reactors as part of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership program. To implement these fuels, work is ongoing to develop fuel fabrication processes, characterize alloy microstructures, measure fuel properties, determine the compatibility of fuel and cladding alloys, and understand the performance of the fuel alloys during irradiation.