Behavior or ATF materials in the entire fuel cycle
Advanced Materials for Light Water Reactor Fuels. Evolutionary and Recolutionary Nuclear Materials

The newer candidate materials for the fuel rods in figure  2 need to perform well in the entire nuclear fuel cycle. The nuclear fuel cycle outlines the different stages of the fuel from fabrication to disposal (figure  9 ). The extracted uranium ore is processed in many ways, chemically and physically, to make the initial fuel pellets that will be housed in the tubes or cladding. The fuel needs to be enriched, for example, so 5 % of the uranium is the fissile isotope 235, and then made into UO _...