Speaker
Description
Within the development of Lead-cooled Fast Reactors, the chemical compatibility of lead with oxide fuels is still a little explored matter. The possibility to predict the effects of the chemical interaction among lead, steel and irradiated nuclear fuel as a consequence of a cladding failure event or a severe nuclear accident is of paramount importance to assess the safety of such nuclear systems.
To this purpose, experimental research activities with oxide fuels are technically complicated, hazardous, and expensive. On the contrary, thanks to the recent progresses achieved in the field, theoretical and computational chemistry combined with semi-empirical methods can enable us to acquire missing thermodynamic parameters and to perform thermodynamic analysis or phase diagram calculations for multi-phase and multi-component systems.
The Radiochemistry Group at Politecnico di Milano is working on such topic within the framework of a national project promoted by MiSE and ENEA. An approach based on theoretical calculations combined with experimental activities by inactive elements or compounds mimicking the fuel composition and behaviour could strongly contribute to make important breakthroughs in the understanding of the chemical behaviour of the fuel-coolant system in Lead-cooled Fast Reactors.
