Changing the rules of the game: used fuel studies outside of a remote handling facility

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has leveraged focused ion beam capability at their Category II Nuclear Facility to facilitate nuclear materials analysis and experimentation at the micron scale. For this particular study, micron-size specimens of un-irradiated UO 2 fuel pellets of various enrichments were prepared and irradiated to a burnup equivalent of 8–3700 MWd/MTU. This represents first of its kind study of used fuel investigations outside of a hot cell facility, dramatically minimizing resource requirements through reduction in scale. Results of this study provide insight into the initial production of noble metal phase particles in used nuclear fuel at extremely low burnup levels.