Uranium Diboride Composite Fuel Materials

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Uranium Diboride is an exciting new nuclear material, which has great potential as an Accident Tolerant Fuel. This class of fuel materials is under intense international development as a result of the nuclear accident at Fukushiima, alongside the desire to reduce active safety requirements within commercial nuclear plants. During this programme, the PhD student will work alongside an established research team, with a dedicated PDRA also engaged on UB2 composite research. The student will manufacture and characterise UB2/UO2 composites using the state-of-the-art nuclear fuel labs at the Nuclear Fuel Centre of Excellence based in the Department of MACE. They will work at the pellet scale, reproducing industrial techniques including working with UO2 powders procued at the Springfields fuel fabrication facility, cold pressing using high-quality hold down systems and hydrogen sintering. They will characterise the manufactured pellets using a range of scientific techniques, including optical and electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction and thermo-physical measurements. Results will be used to further optimise the manufacture of composite pellets and develop industrially scalable fabrication routes.