<p>Simulant ceramics for spent AGR nuclear fuel</p><p>Supervisors: Prof. Bill Lee and Dr. Doni Daniel.</p><p>Funding: NDA.</p><p>Available: Oct 2013. </p><p>In the UK there is about 9000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) from AGR nuclear power plants. A significant part of this stock will be reprocessed but much will have to be disposed of in a geological repository. To do this safely and securely, basic research has to be conducted to better understand the properties of this material. However, work with such highly radioactive material is difficult and expensive. To overcome this issue, simulated spent nuclear fuel has been developed for LWR spent fuel and this project will adjust processing parameters to fit more closely AGR SNF and produce a specific AGR simulant fuel (SIMFuel). After successful processing simulated material will be characterised by XRD, SEM, TEM, FIB and EDX, and the results will be compared to previous SIMFuel and available SNF data. This comparison will determine whether the use of SIMFuel is appropriate for studying the behaviour of SNF under repository conditions.</p>