Idaho National Labs Deep Burn Pebble Plans

This is a follow up to the Idaho National Labs achieving 19% burn of pebble fuel

Pebble bed fuel could theoretically achieve 65% burn, but would require highly enriched fuel.

Dr. Dave Petti [Laboratory Fellow, Director Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR)
Technology Development Office (TDO)]

Currently our plans to do include going to those ultra high burnups which would require high enriched uranium levels.

We are now focusing on two major activites:
(a) characerizing the performance of the fuel at higher temperatures that simulate off-normal conditions and
(b) demonstrating that this fuel can be fabricated at industrial scale and still perform successfully.