> At that factory Karen Silkwood worked (fuel for the FFTF) at they were making the workers wear respirators 100% of the time because they couldn't eliminate detectable particles.
Hmm. Dealing with Pu dust is a well known problem. Nobody knows exactly why, but Pu dust has an amazing capability to rapidly contaminate things. Best guess is that the high alpha activity of Pu produces a lot of recoil events propelling the Pu dust particle around (increasing it's diffusion constant, if you will).
I don't know exactly what the French do to make it work, is it PPE's, robotic handling or whatever.
> On paper nitride fuels are very high performing but I have no idea what goes into making them.
It's in some respects similar to making oxide fuels, you first somehow create microgranules (hopefully evenly sized) of the fuel which you then sinter into pellets. Nitrides, however, present several additional challenges. But it seems that these are not insurmountable problems, it's just that oxides have a large head start; and nitrides not being compatible with LWR's doesn't help finding R&D money either. Here's a recent overview: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6267113/
Personally I'm somewhat bullish on nitrides, if large-scale use of metal cooled reactors ever becomes a thing, that is.
Hmm. Dealing with Pu dust is a well known problem. Nobody knows exactly why, but Pu dust has an amazing capability to rapidly contaminate things. Best guess is that the high alpha activity of Pu produces a lot of recoil events propelling the Pu dust particle around (increasing it's diffusion constant, if you will).
I don't know exactly what the French do to make it work, is it PPE's, robotic handling or whatever.
> On paper nitride fuels are very high performing but I have no idea what goes into making them.
It's in some respects similar to making oxide fuels, you first somehow create microgranules (hopefully evenly sized) of the fuel which you then sinter into pellets. Nitrides, however, present several additional challenges. But it seems that these are not insurmountable problems, it's just that oxides have a large head start; and nitrides not being compatible with LWR's doesn't help finding R&D money either. Here's a recent overview: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6267113/
Personally I'm somewhat bullish on nitrides, if large-scale use of metal cooled reactors ever becomes a thing, that is.