Objective: Provide new data to further the understanding of LWR fuel performance at high burnup under loss-of‑coolant accident (LOCA) conditions.

Facilities: TREAT reactor and hot cells (United States)

Core Group: DOE, INL, ORNL, NRC, EPRI (United States), Westinghouse (Sweden), IRSN (France), JAEA (Japan)

Member Area (password protected)

LOC–HBu is designed to support burnup extension needs by addressing identified research and development priorities to achieve an improved understanding of fuel fragmentation, relocation, and dispersal (FFRD) of HBu fuel during LOCA events. The data produced from LOC-HBU will be used to further validate and confirm existing models and inform future R&D and model development.

The planned programme of work to be conducted in 2024-2027 includes four tests on commercial irradiated fuel segments; one test to replicate the Halden IFA-650-10 and 15 experiments to the greatest extent possible on a fuel segment near 65 GWd/t, one test on similar material imposing stored energy heatup (SEH) conditions and two tests replicating conditions of the first two tests on fuel materials at a higher target burnup limit of ~75 GWd/t.