Properties of plutonium and its alloys for use as fast reactor fuels

Early interest in metallic plutonium fuels for fast reactors led to much research on plutonium alloy systems including binary solid solutions with the addition of aluminum, gallium, or zirconium and low melting eutectic alloys with iron and nickel or cobalt. There was also interest in ternaries of these elements with plutonium and cerium. The solid solution and eutectic alloys have most unusual properties, including negative thermal expansion in some solid-solution alloys and the highest viscosity known for liquid metals in the Pu–Fe system. Although metallic fuels have many potential advantages over ceramic fuels, the early attempts were unsuccessful because these fuels suffered from high swelling rates during burn up and high smearing densities. The liquid metal fuels experienced excessive corrosion. Subsequent work on higher melting U–Pu–Zr metallic fuels was much more promising. In light of the recent rebirth of interest in fast reactors, we review some of the key properties of the early fuels and discuss the challenges presented by the ternary alloys.