 Good afternoon. Welcome to the Accident Tolerant Fuel Readiness Session of the NRC's 2022 Regulatory Information Conference. My name is Joe Donoghue, and I will be facilitating this session today where we'll have the pleasure of hearing from key players in the important work being done to develop Accident Tolerant Fuels for existing commercial reactor applications. I'm going to ask for all the panelists to show their faces now for a moment. I just want to introduce the panelists for today's session. They are besides myself, Scott Greenley, Constellation Energy, Richard Augie from Global Nuclear Fuel, Andrew Griffith from the Department of Energy, and Dr. Didier Jacmain from Nuclear Energy Agency. Thank you to all, thanks to all of you for being part of a panel today. Back to me. We'll have time to hear from each panelist, and then ample opportunity to include all of you in a conversation about the status of activities underway to develop and license ATF fuel designs. I encourage you to form questions during the presentations, submit them via the online chat feature. Your questions and comments will form the basis of our panel discussion in the latter half of our session. We'll answer as many questions today as time permits. Now for my presentation on NRC's activities for licensing ATF fuel designs. Again, I'm Joe Donoghue, I'm the Director of the Division of Safety Systems in the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation here at the NRC. Among other things, the experts in this division review the safety of fuel designs. Next slide please. So what is accidental and fuel? I just want to take a few minutes to make sure we're all oriented on the subject of today's session. ATF concepts gained attention following the events at Fukushima Daiichi. The idea was to develop fuel design features based on new materials and configurations to improve the ability of reactive fuel to better withstand challenges that could occur during normal operation, anticipated operational occurrences and accidents. I'll just hear shortly from Mr. Griffith. Congress has provided direction to DOE and the NRC regarding ATF developments. That is included in the long term goal of reducing the cost of electricity production. Now I just want to point out here that the NRC safety reviews do not include cost criteria when we make our determinations. Next slide please. The NRC's plan for activities to ensure our readiness to license ATF designs are contained in the ATF project plan. You can peruse the plan at your pleasure via the NRC's website and we'll provide a link during our session today. The plan was first issued in 2019 and was recently revised. In short, it explains how the NRC's focused on early interactions with stakeholders in the nuclear power industry as well as the Department of Energy to stay abreast of the development of technical information related to the ATF designs. It also explains activities that we are engaging in to maximize our readiness to license new designs. Our activities span the NRC organization to include technical and licensing experts in the Office of Nuclear Reactive Regulation as well as the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, Nuclear Materials Safety and Safeguards as well as others. As depicted in the slide that you can see here, we are engaging with stakeholders during the technical development stage of ATF designs and I'll say very early in the technical development stage. This focus on those activities well in advance of licensing submittals has helped us to gain understanding to inform our preparations for licensing with the intent of minimizing the time and resources that will be needed to conduct the safety and licensing reviews. This parallel processing is different than how the NRC historically considered new submittals. Communication and engagement throughout the development and submittal process is key. We cannot rely on an approach where we wait for a submittal before focusing on the technical and regulatory issues. Next slide please. Our accomplishments and I'm going to start by pointing to some earlier accomplishments in preparations for licensing ATF before 2021. Where in addition to forming our plan, some things that we completed included issuing guidance for coded cladding in the form of the interim staff guidance document 20-01. We also conducted phenomena identification and ranking table exercises and literature reviews for cladding, high burn up and severe accidents. We also developed the ATF website and keep it up to date to enhance our communication with the public and other stakeholders. Recent accomplishments, as you can see on the slide here, include issuing paper to the commission on our plans for rulemaking covering increased enrichment in conventional and accidental field designs. We also did a more recent revision of the ATF project plan that accounts for a recent focus towards high burn up and increased enrichment. At the end of last year, the staff issued research information letter 2021-13, which was an update of our understanding of the NRC staff's understanding of the information regarding fuel fragmentation, relocation and spurs for higher burn up. Early this year, we issued a communication to industry in a form of a letter regarding our scheduling expectations regarding the licensing of ATF increased enrichment high burn up fields. In the course of the last year, we've held or participated in numerous workshops, other meetings, pre-submitted meetings for expected submittals as part of that engagement with early engagement with stakeholders. Now, as far as plans for the next few years, you can expect our activities will stem from these accomplishments, most importantly, adjustments that we may need to make to the regulatory infrastructure to maximize our readiness to license ATF for operating plants. These activities will be part of our continued interaction and focus on what is needed for licensing these new designs. Next slide, please. That's a quick, very quick overview of the NRC's ATF readiness efforts. You can see more information at our website that's on this slide here, as I mentioned earlier. You can also contact us directly at the email address on the screen. Thanks very much for your attention. Now I'm going to introduce our next panelist, Mr. Andrew Griffith. Mr. Griffith is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Supply Chain for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy. In his role, he leads DOE's research and development on advanced nuclear fuel cycle technologies that have the potential to improve resource utilization and energy generation, reduce nuclear waste generation, and limit proliferation risk. Mr. Griffith. Thank you, Joe, and good afternoon, everyone, or good evening and good morning for those of you in different time zones. Thank you for the introduction. I'm glad to be part of this panel. I have two slides today. One that depicts the historical origins of the accident tolerant fuel program. And one that depicts the shows where we are today. Next slide, please. This first slide notes the program was established in 2012, as Joe mentioned by Congress, soon after the accident at Fukushima. The goals that continue today are to establish fuel with enhanced accident tolerance for the existing fleet of commercial U.S. reactors in a short amount of time. Before attributes for accident tolerance, as noted on this slide, developing light water reactor fuel that can withstand extreme conditions like those experienced at Fukushima is essential deploying the next generation of fuel for the existing light water reactor fleet. Next slide, please. This second slide shows that the accident power fuel rods that develop our three U.S. fuel suppliers have been installed in eight reactors beginning in 2018. That's four years sooner than the goal originally set in the initial development plan. So as this slide is up on the screen, I'm going to walk through a number of activities underway and what we're doing in support of this program. So the Department of Energy contributes the readiness of the industry to deploy accident tolerant fuel by providing financial assistance in a cost sharing arrangement to the three U.S. fuel suppliers. We are also providing unique technical support through the national laboratories. The radiation testing capabilities at the Idaho National Laboratory and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory provide the industry teams with a range of irradiation conditions that provide them with the information to develop their concepts and the data to qualify their fuel for use. The transient reactor test facility or treat at the Idaho National Laboratory was restarted in large measure to enable the collection of transient performance data needed to qualify the accident tolerant fuel being discussed today. State of the art post radiation examination capabilities and out of reactor testing facilities further enhance the information to data that the fuel suppliers need. The first test rods from U.S. commercial reactors are now being examined at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. We are also developing in-situ instrumentation to collect performance data while under irradiation. Investments in advanced modeling and code development at the national laboratories are being used by the industry and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to enhance the understanding of fuel performance under a wide variety of accident conditions. The department utilizes the universities to tackle the research and development gaps that they are well suited for. In recent years, we've established projects in silicon carbide cladding development, critical heat flux and modeling and code development. We also used integrated research projects to address larger issues with multi-university teams. When several universities team up to share information on a common problem, much can be accomplished. The department also values its international collaborations, particularly with the Organization for Cooperation Development or OECD Nuclear Energy Agency. Early on, NEA established an expert working group on accident tolerant fuel that brought together fuel experts from around the world to share information. More recently, they established a framework for radiation experiments, or FIDES, to respond to the shutdown at the Halden Test Reactor in Norway. FIDES is working to ensure that the few remaining test reactors around the world remain fully utilized to meet the broad set of experimental radiation requirements in the absence of the Halden Test Reactor. And finally, as you can see, the accident tolerant fuel program involves a wide range of program participants all working to contribute to the readiness of the industry to deploy accident tolerant fuel in the near future and beyond. When deployed widely throughout the existing fleet, accident tolerant fuel qualified to use a higher burn-up will be able to play a major role in our nation's clean energy future. Thank you. Thank you for your time and attention. And I look forward to the panel discussion. Thanks. Okay, thank you, Andrew. I think we're switching back to me to introduce Mr. Richard Argy from, here we go. Okay. The boiling water reactor, he's a boiling water reactor fuel product director for global nuclear fuel. He has over 20 years of experience in the nuclear industry and quality assurance project management and product management positions. For the past five years, he's been working on strategic projects within global nuclear fuel focused on growth within the business. Mr. Argy. All right. Thank you very much, Joe. And good afternoon to everybody. Glad to be here representing the GE led ATF team and want to thank the NRC's leadership and sponsorship for hosting the RIC. Sorry that we're not in person this year again, but looking forward to when we can be back in person and live. I just would like to walk through some of the highlights of our ATF program and some of the key points within each of the ATF dimensions. So, next slide please. So armor is our coding coding cladding technology, and we're continuing to work on alternatives that can withstand the BWR environment. Consensus has been shared previously. Last year we had our first indication of a performance short shortfall from the hot cell examination at Oak Ridge. Ultimately it's been confirmed that the coding did not survive the DWR environment. So since the initial hot cell findings are cause assessment, identify many possible mechanisms. However, our consensus is that both this solution and interface oxidation are operative and require mitigation. So we see significant water chemistry dependency as the initial optimal microscopy from the ATF2 irradiation and PWR conditions revealed an intact coding. So we don't see any significant radiation enhancement. We believe this is all based upon the water chemistry. So as we continue to evaluate the armor coding as being a significant product, we're working to identify a number of different coding options to mitigate both the mechanisms and our developing testing methods to accelerate performance assessments. So we're targeting late 2023 to establish the next incarnation of armor, which will be followed by LTAs and an initial reload in the latter part of the decade. The next technology I wanted to talk about was ironclad. So since 2018 when we first installed unfueled segments into plant hatch, we've been carrying two variants of iron chrome aluminum forward, one being a low chrome C26M and a high chrome APMT. Originally, they both had, they had different fabrication pathways. But as we've progressed, we've been able to come to the conclusion that the front end is really the best fabrication path for both is powder metallurgy and that the principle difference is the chromium content. So GE, along with our partners at Sandvik, assess that tubing fabrication development is mature. We know how to make thin walled iron chrome aluminum tubing and we're pleased with the fine grain structure of both alloys. As we've shared in the past, we see that tubing at half zircaloy thickness results in fuel cost neutrality for retrofit fuel rods. So what does come along with that half thickness is a bigger pellet, which will increase the heavy metal loading. So as we consider thin wall tubing, it's important to keep in mind the minimum thickness for industrial application is a function of the material characteristics and the fundamentals of iron chrome aluminum that promote thinner plating. So laboratory testing to date continues to confirm good performance with significant improvements in fretting resistance and creep. One of the main things we've been focused on is alpha prime structures and how to maintain a low chrome variant. So the iron chrome aluminum with thermally induced alpha prime in the lab are showing some reduction in ductility, but have have been adequate for the for the needs of the fuel rod in the reactor. Recent experience with hot cell has been focused upon armor and ascertaining the cause mechanisms, but we do have irradiated iron chrome aluminum at hot cells and Oak Ridge and also INL. And within the next 12 months we should be able to establish performance consistent with one cycle of operation. Our objective is to finalize product definition and install pre production prototypes or lead lead use assemblies during this next phase. Next is our le plus and high burn up program and really these are, we've tied these together. The benefits of high burn up motivate le u plus and le u plus enables higher exposure, but they are largely distinct. For le le u plus, we are mainly focused within our factory. We're proceeding down a two step pathway for for licensing in which the criticality methods and safety criteria are approved first and the safety analysis results are reviewed separately. So while it is a serial process and it does take a little bit more time. It does help eliminate some of the uncertainty in the outcome. So, please to announce that our criticality safety analyses are complete and our integrated safety analyses are proceeding at pace to support a second submittal associated with our SNM 1097 license by the middle of this year. And we are commencing with facility modifications in order to be able to handle the higher enrichment. And we are also in the process of analyzing our shipping container and preparing a license amendment for for that shipping container later in this year. And also with with increasing enrichments, it does motivate us to transition to full transport lattice physics to support future fuel evolution. And this propagates throughout the reload licensing system. As such, there are a number of regulatory reviews needed and we have shared our forecast with the staff. At this time we remain on track with our first submittals that were made in December of 2021. So that work is progressing at a good pace right now. Next slide please. So we are performing design studies to frame the first set of value plus applications. And I'll share that fuel rod internal pressure is an important aspect to manage for BWR application. So while we do not see areas of significant technical technical concern with increasing enrichment, the precise timing of the first application will depend upon funding regulatory expedience and the generalized challenges of making significant changes in our industry. Additionally, the screening of methods requiring further attention at high burn up is being performed using a risk informed approach. Once those areas are identified, deterministic treatments without the use of risk are being used to develop compensatory measures for the impacted high burn up methodologies. And one thing to note, you know, with with the increase in richments going to the higher enrichments, it will open up the design box for our design team, which will lead to more technological breakthroughs. We undertook a similar change 25 years ago and going from four to 5% enrichment. And as our one of our chief consulting engineers Russ Fawcett noticed, I cannot imagine a world that is limited to 4%. I expect our future cells will say the same thing about LU plus so we see a lot of opportunity within design space that will be opened up as as we expand past 5%. Next slide please. So once again, let me say thank you to the NRC, the DOE and all our colleagues at the National Labs INL and Oak Ridge and Los Alamos that have been working closely with the GNF team as we move forward with ATF. We're very excited about the future of accident talent fuel and where it will lead. We're cultivating armor as our short term near term ATF concept and iron clad as a next generation cladding. Both of these technologies will be enhanced by the application of LU plus and high burn up. And we're excited to see where this takes us. There's still a lot more work to do, and we appreciate the industry and the NRC and the DOE working with us as we go through this. So turn it back to you Joe. Thank you, Mr. I found the correct button to unmute myself so thank you very much. I'd like to introduce Scott Greenley. Who's with constellation. Mr Greenley joined excellent now constellation in 2007 as a corporate engineering director and subsequently promoted to the position of senior vice president engineering and technical services in July 2013. Before excellent, he had numerous engineering leadership positions in three nuclear utilities and had previously spent four years as an inspector in the NRC, including two years as a resident specter of Beaver Valley nuclear station. Mr Greenley. All right, thank you Joe, and welcome everybody. I'm excited to be part of this panel. And I want to provide a little bit of background just to get my discussion going. Andy mentioned that the accident tolerant fuel program was established by Congress in 2012. Unfortunately, the industry really didn't wake up to the concept of accident tolerant fuel until about the 2016 timeframe, when we discussed it a lot at the ANS utility working conference. And what we what we decided or what we discovered was, you know, there are various benefits to accident tolerant fuel, which I'll get into in the next slide. But when you in order to offset the cost increase of accident tolerant fuel because there is going to be a cost increase. We said, hey, NRC, we really like to license higher enriched fuel and higher burdens, and putting those two together along with accident tolerant fuel offsets the cost of the accident tolerant fuel and gives us quite frankly better performance in our course. So, so that's kind of the background next slide please. Next. There we go. Okay, why accident tolerant fuel. Why now. Well, you know, when once we woke up in 2016 to the fact that accident tolerant fuel was going to be a real benefit and go to the next. What we discovered was that we think that accident tolerant fuel would have prevented the TMI accident. And that's that's just the coated coated clad. Now, would that have prevented Fukushima. No, but it would have pretty very possibly would have prevented TMI. So, big deal. Next, and the cladding the coated cladding should eliminate fuel cladding defects. That piece of foreign material gets into our core. And it starts scratching at the, the fuel rod. It's not the coding is going to prevent any sort of cladding defect, which is also a really big deal. Okay, next. Okay, but we have some significant obstacles at the moment to deployment of ATF. We didn't recognize these obstacles until late last year. Go to the next. Next bullet. Joe mentioned that NRC issued a paper on fuel fragmentation release and dispersal. It's extremely conservative, conservative, and it's going to prevent us from getting the benefits from the higher enrichment, higher burnout. I mean, not completely. But we're going to have to, for example, in order to meet the requirements of this new paper, we're going to have to put less fuel into our fuel rods in order to allow the gases to expand. So that's cutting down on the cost benefits. So that's a, that's a problem. Next, I don't believe we mentioned the new source term paper, but there's a reg guide, which tells us how to determine the dose from an accident. And there was that reg guide is in draft. We're still talking about it. But it's, again, it's very, very conservative. And what it's going to do is it's going to increase the cost to implement ATF because we're going to have to do something to reduce the dose to the operators. You have to do something to reduce the dose that you would get at the, to the public if you had an accident. So again, it really reduces the overall benefits for us in the industry in implementing ATF. And next, we've already talked about this. Rich talked about the the clouding issues with the BWR. So we've got more work to do there. But in parallel, we at Exlon are still planning to move forward with higher enrichment and higher burnout. And the first, the first reload for us was planned to be in the fall of 2024 at our peach bottom nuclear site. But right now there's, like I said, there's some obstacles here. Okay, next. So what is the path forward? And this is just Greenleigh's view of world. But next, one more please. There we go. XLPR, Extremely Low Probability of Rupture. This was a software development that was developed with between NRC and EPRI. And it's a, it's a risk informed approach. And so what we're intending to do, and Rich mentioned this in his discussion, and the PWRs are doing very similar work is we're going to go through and determine what is really the risk of a large break loco. And if that risk is so low that we shouldn't really have to determine or shouldn't really have to assume the large break loco leads to FFRD, then that that's going to be a success path. Otherwise, at the moment, I'm a little discouraged about ATF is because of the conservatism was in the things that we've just added on to the plate. And I really didn't anticipate these when we started in 2016. But I think XLPR get us there. So anyway, that's it for me. Back to you, Joe. Okay, thank you, Scott. Now I'm going to introduce our next and last panelist, Dr. Didier Jacques Main. He's served as a senior nuclear safety specialist at OECD Nuclear Energy Agency since January 2020. He's a technical advisor for the Nuclear Safety Technology Regulation Division for the working groups activities under the committee on the safety of nuclear installations. And for joint nuclear safety research projects. Before joining NEA, he worked for 27 years at the French technical support organization IRSN in the nuclear safety research area and was mostly involved in research programs on fuel safety, severe accidents and aging. He earned a PhD in physical chemistry from the Weissman Institute of Science in 1992. Dr. Jacques Main. Thank you very much for the introduction and welcome all to this panel and I'm very glad to be here also and to contribute to the discussions of this panel on ATF. So, the objective of my presentation is to provide an overview of activities and perspective at the Nuclear Energy Agency to support advanced fuel technologies decryments. So NEA is offering international collaborative frameworks with its 34 member countries and consistently with the last strategic plan of the agency to work for accelerating the readiness of innovative designs. So with activities that are looking in a synchronized way for enhancing the technology readiness levels and the licensing readiness levels. So, next slide please. So under the CSNI, so the Committee of the Safety of Nuclear Installation and the Nuclear Science Committee. Activities include the development, the review and the assessment of technical basis for fuel and cladding behavior analysis for normal of normal and accidental situation in reactor and in fuel cycle operations. So among these NEA works on the development of databases. For instance for compiling critical and sub critical benchmark experiment data and evaluations. You have the ICSBEP project that includes data for fuel enriched above 5% for instance. And there are also some database for analysis of effects of clad fuel material interactions in severe accident condition. So these are the databases that are developed for severe accident analysis. So under the NEA O species, state of the art reports on ATF technology and status reports on iBurnups and iEnrich fuels were actually developed with recommendations on needed research, including for safety and licensing. And these were provided by international expert groups. The SOAR on ATF technologies provided use of the experts on the technology readiness level of various ATF technologies. And there is a status report ongoing discussing the safety implication of the use of fuel enriched above 5%. This is currently on the development. Some activities are also addressing assessment of modeling tools of methods and criteria for nuclear fuel safety. There was a workshop on fuel modeling and support of performance and safety that took place in 2017. And a technical opinion paper on the applicability of nuclear fuel safety criteria to value safety of technologies was developed in 2020. And regarding the methods, they are currently discussion in the CSNI working groups on fuel safety about potential future work to gather experience on development and use of risk informed approaches in complement with deterministic approaches for fuel safety analysis, including for fuel innovative design. So NEA is also promoting international collaborative experimental research projects to support the ATF developments. Example of these will be given later in the presentation. Next slide please. So I'd like to comment a little bit on main outcome from some of these activities. Although it had been recognized in those activities that many research projects have been conducted and are still ongoing nationally and at the international level. So at NEA, at IEA, at the European Commission on ATF, it was recommended to further enhance the technical basis to fully characterize the properties and performance of the ATF. And better support a clear demonstration and quantification of margin gains and risk reduction. So for instance, the core damage risk. So research needs have been identified by type of facility with a cross cutting format illustrating how the research facility could support different ATF technologies. So regarding modeling, advanced fuel performance mechanistic model are considered adapted to model the evolutionary concepts such as chromium coated cladding and DOP2. With opportunities for collaborative research to enhance the validation and prediction capabilities as detailed on the slide. And this research should include fuel and clad detail characterization from lead fuel assembly irradiated in commercial reactors. Also outsell facilities testing and testing in research reactors. More challenges are expected for the modeling of more revolutionary complex such as a silicon carbide cladding or uranium silicon as detailed on the slide. So clearly the design with limited departures from the currently licensed technologies have logically the least impact on applicability of existing fuel design and performance criteria. These are they are close to deployment and licensing in several countries. And as earlier highlighted, collaborative research to fit gaps in the empirical data base to better assess the margin gains and risk reduction should support the deployment and licensing. Finally, regarding severe accident modeling. These they are considered adapted for DOP2 fuel but high temperature testing is needed to investigate the effect of fuel cloud material interaction for coated cladding and more revolutionary concepts. So there is clearly a need to collect an archive basic data for instance on protected formation and the effect of fuel cloud degradation in severe accident condition. So next slide please. Now going to the existing framework for research project to support ATF development at NEA. There is the NEA new framework for irradiation experiment the Fidesz that has been launched in 2021 in the wake of the closure of the Alden reactor. So it provides a for a platform for fuel including ATFs and material testing using nuclear research reactor around any member countries such as the BR2 reactor in Belgium. The LVR 15 reactor in the Czech Republic, the near reactor in Russia, the NSR reactor in Japan and the TREAT reactor in the US. So during the first phase of the project, ATF testing will be conducted at LVR 15 for in-pile at ATF cladding clip studies and there will be an AII burn up investigation plan at TREAT and NSR. Further testing is a plan in the program of work beyond 2024. We hope to establish the capacities for in-reactor transient and accident in the gold testing. So the priority are given to ATF evolutionary concept and standing safety issues for AII burn up and AII rich fuel. So for instance, transform behavior in AII. Next slide please. So another example is the recently launched quench ATF project that includes pre-large scale bundle tests containing 21 fuel road simulants with ATF cladding material. So chromium coated optimized air load provided by the wasting house will be tested and possibly a silicon carbide cladding provided by general atomics. These are done at the KIT quench facility and testing is designed to cover design basis conditions and CV accident scenario with temperature exceeding 1200 degrees C above the zirconium chromium temperature. This to address some of the earlier discussed knowledge gaps. So up to this point, almost no integral last shell experiments were conducted to address the design basis accident and beyond design basis accident scenario. So an example is the quench 19 bundle test at KIT with a heat cold cladding that was done in cooperation with ORML and showed the superior behavior of the ATF cladding with much less hydrogen production. And also shed light on some remaining challenges, showing the interest of performing integral test to investigate complex thermo hydraulic chemical and mechanical behavior for conditions that are as prototypical as possible and for transient condition up to beyond design basis accident conditions. And for such experiments will be used for validation of few performance codes, such as business and fast and also put systems simulating severe accident scenario like made core map Aztec and others. So a special issue for ATF cladding is a determination of the cooking time, one of the main characteristic metrics for ATF material which will be evaluated from these and for experiments. Next slide and last slide. So to conclude, and looking ahead, and I will continue to assist its members to promote in promoting international collaboration to support the development of advanced technologies. So on one side, ensuring information exchanges between the relevant international initiative in the field, and also working on updating the research priority for enhancing the ATF technology readiness level and licensing readiness level. We have done integrating as fast as the both state of the art knowledge from research and development from lead assembly testing and implementation plans in any a number countries. So any I will also continue and I think testing capabilities and developing few days as a framework for human cladding testing and key research reactors, and with cooking between experimentation and advanced modeling and simulation. Again, another objective of any is also to contribute to preserving key experimental data sets to support licensing of ideas. So thank you very much for your attention. Well, thank you very much. Dr. Jacqueline and all the panelists free for your presentations and your remarks. We're going to transition now and I'll just remind everyone who's who's new audience to we have a couple of questions but submit your questions via the online chat. We'll start that now I think we're all on screen yesterday. Here's a roll on screen now panelists. So now the now the fun part of our session begins. So the first question is really directed to the panel but I'll, I'll try answering the easy part, and then see if I can help with the tougher part of the question. Question is basically they've heard about the question is heard about ff rd, and that is fuel fragmentation relocation and dispersal. There's mentioned in our presentations today and I guess, you know, other meetings, it appears to be a concern for fuels and the reactor for a long time. And the question of like to know exactly what is being done to address. So I'll, like I said, try the easy part. What ff rd stands for again fuel fragmentation relocation dispersal. So the first, the first part of it fuel fragmentation is the fuel pellet over the course of operation. As the fuel is burned higher burn ups, the fuel pellet itself will start to develop cracks and start to fragment and this has been this has been a phenomenon that industry nrc do we's been aware of. I say I think even before maybe 2010 or 12 so it's not a new phenomenon. So the staff staff's been aware of it. In fact, the staff has considered it for a while in licensing reviews as as fuels have increased in their burn up or they're allowed time in the core is for fuel rod or fuel to be generated by burn up. And over time, the nrc is approved applications for a higher higher burn us for certain field designs. Now we're addressing are even more extended higher burn ups than what it's currently in operation. And it's now known that the fragmentation can become more extensive. And then the rd part of ff rd the relocation dispersal is the potential for under accident conditions if the cladding were to fail. The small fragments of fuel being relocated and dispersed throughout the, throughout the, the react to call assist. So that that's the source of the concern is the, the fuel after its fragments in an accident could be moved outside of the core can we can lose the configuration that the fuel is originally in so I know that there's work going on to better understand this testing and that you've heard a little bit about today in the presentations so far. That's being done at DOE facilities and overseas and international test programs that I'll ask the panelists to be ready to talk about a little bit more here, but the work continues. Now the, the research information letter that was recently issued that you've heard mentioned a couple of times for the panelists here was the nrc just updating with the available information that we have our understanding of the technical issues related to that. Now that's, it's, it's really a, it's not, it's not a regulatory guide, it's not a regulation, it's not anything like that it's an internal document that now we, so the, what part of the nrc is what we're going to do about it. Part of the question here, the nrc is using that information to take steps needed to start and I think I mentioned regulatory infrastructure, including looking at our guidance and what additional guidance makes sense and working with the industry we would do that to put out the appropriate I think you'll, I'll stop in a minute because you've heard Mr. Greenlee mentioned that there's, there's potential to look at the probability of different accidents and how, how severe they could be to challenge fuel collecting. So those are a number of things that I'm aware of that are going on out there I know experts here on the panel. There's some more detail that I can share. So I'll see if any panelists are ready to supplement my answer. Yeah, I'll just re-emphasize that DOE is looking to establish some experimental capabilities to better understand the phenomena and the conditions by which that may occur. So we still have some work to do there, but I think there's still, you know, other ways of addressing the challenge that Scott, I think, mentioned earlier. Yeah, just on the, from a fuel side, we are looking at it within our LEU plus and high burnout program and determining the impact of the research information letter and what we can do within our analysis and within our fuel rod design if need be to make changes. Thanks. From the NEA side, I could comment that in the working group on fuel safety, this is clearly an issue that is of interest for the fuel safety community. This has been discussed extensively in the recent state of the art report on locale on one side and on the other side and as you probably well know, these are subjects that are under investigations, and at least for the area is sort of accidents. So this is some issues that I looked at in February and as you mentioned the activity of they're clearly more relevance for I burn up and very I burn up too. So this is really something that is of interest and that is currently being looked at and investigated. Thank you. All right. Don't think any other panelists were not to that question, response to that question so I'll move on to the second question, which is directed to the NRC. So, do my best to respond. The question is, how does the NRC work with stakeholders to approach technical disagreements in the interpretation of research activities. So I think that this is a question is probably prompted by the research information that has been mentioned. And I think Scott mentioned in his remarks, how there are stakeholders that consider quite conservative. And, you know, how do we NRC deal with those disagreements so the, the regulatory information letters really an internal document from from the experts the technical experts to allow us in staff to use that information to appropriate regulatory steps now what we're not doing is is taking that research information letter and translating it directly into into a regulatory requirement or guidance. Because we realize and the information in there is an update, and there's other considerations besides the just the, the, the could be other information that could be provided by other stakeholders that the NRC for one reason or another regulatory information or as research is continuing could be developed to supplement our understanding, but also there's other considerations I think Mr Greenlees presentation he discussed a tool XLPR software that's being that that is that's me explored as a means to apply a risk risk insight that's one avenue to apply risk insights to the potential for that relocation dispersal that I mentioned so, but just generically the NRC takes that kind of information, we are considering what guidance, any updates existing guidance or new, possibly new guidance would make sense to address the technical concerns here to make the, to make the right framework and put the right framework in place to support future licensing and regulatory decisions. So when we would do that, those were required to take steps to ensure public interactions we have invite public comments on any regulatory draft regulatory documents. One example that you heard about today was the regulatory guide this under development on the update to the regulatory guidance on source term that Mr really mentioned, and we've had lots of interaction with the public on that to be further interaction. So any other guidance that we will put together, we would be taking those steps and addressing addressing other comments to disagreements. And the NRC has to make the appropriate reasonable assurance determinations, and that's our responsibility. All right, I'm going to go on to question three. This is directed to Mr Griffith from their department of energy. The question being what performance is observed for quenching and what kind of material characterization is carried out for ATF. That sounds quite technical. Yeah, I'm not familiar with any of the work we've done recently on quenching. But I would like to open it up to the other panelists to see if they're aware. Yeah, I think I think particularly that was of concern really for the silicon carbide technology. So I don't know if we're quite there yet. I'm not sure if any of the panelists other panelists are able to give us insights on that. Wait a second. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Question four is directed to Mr Greenlee. And I'll read it a couple times just to make sure you can hear the whole question Scott. The example that you cited of TMI is quite interesting. But it seems that the advances produced by ATF for the moment don't really increase the tolerance of fuel efficiently to face accidents and maybe effectively to face accidents such as locus. Indeed, as you mentioned, source term and tritium issues are not so easy to deal with. What is in your view the deadline to implement industrial and I guess an industrial scale ATF in the US fleet. So I'll read it one more time. I just stumbled through the wording here. The example of TMI is quite interesting, but it seems that the advances produced by ATF for the moment don't really increase the tolerance of fuel effectively to face accidents such as locus. Indeed, as you mentioned, source term and tritium issues are not so easy to deal with. So what is in your view the deadline to implement ATF on a large scale in the US fleet. Okay, well, like I said, for excellent or for a constellation, I got to get used to the new company, but we're, we're planning to implement starting in 2024. What I've asked GE to do, and we're also engaged with Framatome and Westinghouse in their designs, but you know, most of big part of our fleet are BWRs. And so we've asked GE to really hunker down and, you know, start getting full core reloads starting in 2024. And now, again, that's just going to be higher enrichment, higher burnout at this point until we can figure out the new, the new coded clad. But as soon as that's available, we'll we'll put in the new coded clad too, because it's going to be very beneficial and like I said, eliminates fuel defects, etc. So I, you know, I think by the end of the decade, I would generally like, you know, all of my BWRs to have higher enrichment and higher burnout. And we'll see where the coding falls in. And we'd really like to get that as quickly as we possibly can to hopefully that answers the question. Thanks. It does. Thank you. I have a question myself for the panel, including myself. So I'll answer my question to start with and then ask you to weigh in. So the the NRC is aware that there's, you know, I think you've heard it in several remarks, including most recently this morning, the EDOs about the challenge we have in keeping our, our expertise base, you know, keeping our human capital resources, you know, the people, the experts that we need technical and regulatory experts here at the NRC to be ready to do the work we need to do. So in the area of fuel, fuel development, I think it surprises a lot of people that fuel technologies changed over the years. It has not been static at all, even before ATF appear on the horizon. So there's a lot of people that gained a lot of experience but some of them are leaving professional life. So I'm just, you know, the question that is in my mind is, you know, what are, what are the prospects for you? How difficult has it been to get new people on your staff that you need with that kind of expertise? I'll just say for the NRC, it's been a challenge. We have some really promising talent that has joined the NRC recently. So I think, I think for the, for the immediate future, we're in good shape. However, you know, I think that there's other, there's other opportunities that people have besides the NRC, maybe working for some review. So I just, I just want to throw that to the panel. What kind of challenge do you see in that part of the business? You know, Joe, I'll go first. It's interesting as I'm thinking about your question. Because, you know, my organization is fairly, fairly large in a big, you know, probably have about 100 and some 100 plus fuel engineers. And we've been actually able to maintain the staff we need in fuels. I'm having problems in other parts of my organization, but in fuels for whatever reason, we seem to be able to attract people and keep people. Because, you know, one of the things we're doing, which I know G is probably not real happy with me on this one, but you know, we're bringing our methods, we call it vendor independent methods in house, so that we can do our own core designs. And that excites the engineers. They really are excited about being able to do the core designs, as opposed to just kind of overlooking, you know, GE or Westinghouse or Framitone. So it's not been a problem. Thanks. Our nuclear energy university program has been an outstanding pipeline for young talent in the fuel area. And as I had mentioned, our integrated research projects that had a number of universities involved that that was an excellent application or use of those that expertise for from the universities. And I've seen a range of outstanding young talent across the various fuel suppliers as well. So I think the future is bright. But yeah, the time is right now so that the experience of the more later career folks to share their knowledge and experience with the new generation, you know, word we're probably in a transitionary period that's really important so that that that experience can be transferred. Thanks. I'd echo what Andy said is as far as you know recruiting younger talent into the organization. You know it is going to be that knowledge transfer from from the more experienced personnel and allowing that to transfer to to the younger workforce that's coming up and what it's going to do and has been doing is opening up opportunities for those newer employees to step into technical leader roles or managerial roles that probably are you know a couple of years ahead of where they would be so it's it's actually propelling them forward. And I think that's a good thing because it is giving them a little bit more responsibility a little bit more learning experience and the opportunity to to really show what they can do. So, you know it is it is difficult finding those mid level and later level career individuals to pull into the into our organization but you know we do continue to look out there in the industry and you know hope to continue to expand and both in in the mid level and the entry level. I'll just add that, you know, one of the challenges we're facing in the DOE programs is because of the very high degree of focus on the Accent-Tolerable Program for existing light water reactor technology. The more advanced fuels area have suffered because the funding has been reduced in those areas and and again that's that's the kind of technology that does excite young talent and and we've lost a lot of early career people in our advanced fuels R&D areas as a result of that reduction in funding so I just want to share that plug. Thanks. Likewise in the NRC there's you know a talent pool and they get assigned work in a number of different areas and that that competition for people's attention from advanced reactor efforts is becoming more and more apparent all the time. Alright, so thanks thanks for going along with that surprise question, but I think it's important yeah it's important to us for NRC you know we're talking about readiness to the license and we need to have the people to do it so the right people to do it. So it's important to us. The next question I have here is directed to Mr. Augie and Global Nuclear Fuel. When do you think the types of advanced fuels that you discussed will be available industrially I guess at large scales for full reloads? When do you think the types of advanced fuels that you discussed will be available for full reloads? Full reloads you know we looked at the armor technology we're looking at the late 2020s and ironclad would be probably a couple of years behind that so you know we would like to have armor ready for reload by 2028 and then we would love to be able to follow that up with an ironclad reload shortly thereafter. LEU plus and high burn up as Scott said we are targeting 2024 to get that out there so you know we'll have that out in anticipation of the ATF concepts catching up to them. Thanks. And of course Rich is going to try and improve that schedule on the. Yes. Okay. Yeah, and I'll just say that, you know, talking about the NRC is right in this, you know, coded planting is something we that was one of the early areas where we engaged. There is guidance available now that was issued by the NRC. So I think, you know, the focus lately on up for us is the kind of a pivot to include higher burn up and increased enrichment as well. And that's actually the focus of the next question. To you Scott, Mr Greenlee. You identified, I think, you know, we discussed this a little bit but I'll ask the question to see if you want to add to what we've discussed Scott. You identified the NRC's recent real and the draft regulatory guidance is challenges for license and ATF. So the question is pointing out that these don't provide requirements or dictate specific approaches. So I guess, you know, there's flexibility. I'm trying to read the question quickly that this flexibility in the regulatory infrastructure to use other approaches to include other risk informed approaches and additional information. So what are these plans for providing the such additional information to the NRC so we can fully consider those approaches. Well, like I mentioned, I think XL PR is the path forward. So we're, we're actively working XL PR right now for the PWR is an expect to have that ready for an early review by third quarter this year. And G is going to actually beat that for me. But the GGE has just just got it just gotten started on XL PR so the time frame is not clear yet. But I would expect we should be able to get something using the PWR model. You know, by late this year, maybe early next year for the BWRs. For those who haven't heard of XL PR, correct me if I'm wrong, Scott. That is a way to predict the failure of a of a component of a pipe, for example, right? Yeah, so it's not I just want to make sure people aren't mistaken at that. That's the, we have to call this as a pipe. It's not that it's not the failure of the fuel itself that XL PR addresses, correct? Correct. But what XL PR does is it predicts the likelihood of an in particular large break and medium break locus, because we can address small break is deterministically, but it predicts that. And let's just say for the sake of argument, you know, we come out with it's e to the minus ninth probability, you know, we're going to come to the NRC and say, look, this is a really, really, really low probability. And we'd like to not have to assume those large break and medium break locus when it comes to FFRD, because it's the loca that drives the FFRD. And that's where it becomes a problem. And that's why we're struggling a bit at the moment because with the new real guidance. Like I said, G's got to reduce the fuel contents in in the fuel bin in order to prevent the FFRD. I'm going to move on to the next question. It's this is directed to you, Dr. Jacques Main. However, I think that maybe others on the panel could could address it as well. It's very short what kinds of in pile and out of pile testing is required for verification of ATF performance. So again what kinds of in pile and out of pile testing is required for verification of ATF performance. I think that in one of the slides I have proposed that there is a recommendation actually from the experts that worked on the top ITF about the sort of testing that would be needed. So clearly, there is in pile testing that would be needed for, as we say, the more prototypic conditions. And that's what is going to be addressed. I think within the FIDES framework. But within the FIDES framework, as you could see, they will be essentially some testing on the chromium coated. They will be adding for the timing and these are the first actually program of work will essentially deal with establishing actually the testing facilities for doing some transform testing and accident testings. While this will have been established in the second phase of FIDES, there will be some testing that are done more on the transient and accident conditions. And I believe that these are the most recommended actually type of testing that should be performed. And there are some in particular, so we also see that in the quench ATF projects, there are currently some testing that will be performed to investigate what is going to happen. Not only for design-based accident conditions, but also for beyond design-based accident conditions because there, the knowledge is very limited. And so there's clearly a need identified actually to perform that sort of testing. So I don't know if I answered completely to your question, but I think it was very detailed. Any other insights from DOE or industry representatives? Nothing really to add, thanks. The only thing I would add is, you know, fission gas measurements are going to be important, especially for the high burn-off activities. So that is one thing that does need to be considered and accomplished in order to reach some of our goals. Thank you. The next question is for the NRC. Could the NRC be risk-smart program, be used to identify and create licensing efficiencies for ATF, increase enrichment and higher burn-off? I'm going to say yes and has been. You know, first of all, I'll say that the NRC for a long time has applied risk insights to its designs involving different fuel designs. In fact, over the course of, I'll say, a generation or so, there are programs in place where there are, I think, relatively minor changes made to fuel designs that don't even require a licensing review. For higher burn-off, what we're involved in now, you know, in higher enrichment, you know, I wouldn't put those in the category of minor. Those are important. But, you know, applying the risk-smart program includes, you know, looking at what could go right, what could go wrong. So just looking at how the NRC put together its ATF project plan, we ask ourselves those questions. You know, just trying to, as I mentioned in one of my slides, you know, having this early interaction as the technologies are developed, there's actually a balance that is struck between the resources that are applied to look at information in the pre-submitted environment, but very early, even before submittals, it is even necessarily contemplated by a particular vendor, where we, the NRC, want to understand the particulars and that it's an inefficiency from a resource standpoint. So, but that is outweighed, we think, and that's why we're taking this approach and this new paradigm and the plan. So we ask ourselves those questions, what are the ups and downsides of taking an approach like that? I'll go further and say, you know, we've asked ourselves questions, and we're doing it right now. You know, taking that regulatory information letter, and, you know, there are, I'll agree with Scott to this extent. Yeah, there are points being made in there that appear to be conservative. But there's other aspects that are raised in the real that we think are potentially ways that could mitigate the effects or the effects that are seen in this new information. So the NRC is, you know, is applying risk-smart when we're looking at the path that Mr. Greenlee has mentioned, and I think there's other paths available that could, from an analysis point of view, be applied to provide risk insights and risk inform our reviews, and we are asking ourselves those questions in the risk-smart framework. Next question is for Department of Energy, Mr. Griffith. What are the promising ATF candidates for deployment in the near future? Yeah, the near future really is on the high-burnup, higher-enriched, coated-cladding fuels. Those are the, that's the technology that is nearest to market, most mature, likely to be deployed in the 2020s. However, we are looking at the silicon carbide to the extent funding permits, as well as the fee crawl technology, which is, does require some additional work. So that's longer. Yeah, those are the longer-term technologies. Thanks. The next question is for Dr. Jacques Mayn. Do you know approximately when the 2022 NEA technical report you mentioned will be issued? You mentioned a report on the development. So, which report are you referring to? Well, I'm not sure which report the questioner is addressing, but I think you mentioned one in your remarks that's under development. Yeah, one report is dealing with safety implications for high-enrichment fuel, and this will be produced at the end of this year, so it's expected to be released next year. And regarding, maybe you were also referring to the top ATF report, that's a report that is providing some reflection on the applicability of fuel safety criteria to various ATF designs. And this is on the publication, and it's supposed to be released this year. So maybe to offer more insights on this one, it's actually focusing on five different sorts of ATF. So this type of ATF we are considered either the most developed or the most valuable. So there is a part on the chromium-coated ATF, a part on fee crawl. There is then a part on silicon carbide, a part on duct fuel, and a part on uranium-silicide fuel. Of course, uranium-silicide fuel and silicon carbide are considered longer term ATF than the other concepts. Okay, thank you. This question is directed to the NRC, but after reading it, I'm going to ask the panelists to weigh in as well. The question is, are the high burn-up, high enrichment economic considerations outweighing safety enhancements of ATF? I'll just say that in my remarks, I think I said one of the goals for ATF that set by Congress when it directed the DOE and NRC to engage in these activities. One of the goals was to reduce the cost of electricity. So that leads into trying to address the cost of the fuel. The NRC is solely focused on the safety of new fuel designs. I'll just add, we're not focused on increasing safety. That's a goal, but for us, it's whatever the design submitted to us for licensing is that we ensure that it's going to maintain safety under the current regulations and guidance. Now, the NRC does not include cost criteria in our reviews. So I think that the question about the other economic considerations outweighing safety enhancements of ATF, that might be better addressed by others on the panel. I'm just going to say that from a utility perspective, we're a business. You know, we have to justify our costs to our shareholders, etc. So we are a business. And so cost is important in our business. We're not a, we, constellation at least is not a regulated utility. We get some support from two of our states. So, you know, some regulated piece in there, but, you know, what bottom line is we owe it to our shareholders to, you know, get our costs where they're supposed to be and maintain safety at the same time. And right now, my view is our nuclear plants are some of the safest, you know, facilities in the world. And we've evolved a lot since TMI. And so they're already extremely safe. And now we're going to make them safer by adding ATF, but in order to add the ATF, we really need to hire enrichment and hire burn-ups to offset the costs of the CODECLAT. And I'll just add that the CODECLATting concept does provide defensive depth and clearly no one's interested in compromising safety. I was going to say, just to add to that, we are, you know, one of the things that we have to keep in mind as we go through fuel designs and new products is the economic we cannot put something out to market that the market's not going to support. So that is one of our goals as we go through is to make sure that whatever product we're developing is going to have a market that it is economically viable. And hence, as we look at, you know, ironclad, the fee crawl alloy is a longer-term solution. But one of the things we're focusing on is how do we make it cost-neutral or even better to make sure that there is an incentive for utilities to want to go to accident tolerance. Okay, thanks. All right, we're getting down to just a few minutes. I think we have time for a couple more questions. Apparently, we have participants that are very interested in hearing from us. So that's great. Rich, since you're still on, this one is directed to you, but I think we could also expand it to the rest of the panel. Is it worth, it's kind of along the same lines as the previous question, is it really worth continuing development of coded ETF concepts? You know, I think it is. And part of the reasoning behind that is you, not every reactor site is going to adopt LU plus and hibernate. And not every reactor site is going to be able to go to ironclad. There are technical considerations that are going to have to be addressed. Whereas coded cladding is, I don't want to say easier, but it has a clearer path to being implemented at almost any site. So, you know, there are limitations, I guess I would say on on, you can't say every site is going to be able to go to LU plus and hot burn up and eventually to like the ironclad cladding. So, so you really need that coded cladding to get the other sites to, you know, the accident tolerant benefit, the defense in depth benefit for debris failures. So I think there definitely is room for coded cladding. You know, as a short term bridge and then potentially for longer term for the sites where it just does not make sense to go to the other technologies. Thank you. I'm going to say I'm fully bought in on coded clad. I think there's a good benefits there. The accident tolerance, the debris, threading, you know, not, not having more cladding defects. So I'm still fully bought into coded clad. I think we have time for really one more question and I'll warn you, Mr Griffith is directed to you but I'll weigh in from the NRC's perspective as well as much as I can. How does ATF fuel R&D efforts integrate and overlap with other DOE fuel R&D programs? How does the DOE ensure that fuel R&D efforts are not duplicative across fuel types specifically for long term ATF and advanced reactive fuel concepts? Yeah, I think the light water reactor application is, you know, squarely, you know, keeps this approach or this technology separate from that fuel that's being developed for, say, sodium pest reactors or high temperature gas or will dissolve reactors. However, I will say that there are some material, there's some some cross cutting material development opportunities, I would say, for coordinating with the other fuel types. But I should back up and start by saying, you know, if it wasn't for the advanced fuel R&D work that had been done over the past several decades, we would not have these types of concepts under development for application today. And that's why, you know, going back to a point I made earlier about the reduction in funding for our advanced fuels R&D program, to think that we're going to be static in our implementation of fuel technology is for just fooling ourselves. Clearly, the existing generation of light water reactor fuel has improved significantly through evolutionary improvements over the decades to where the failure rate is just so low, you know, credit going to the fuel vendors and the work that they do, every and so on. But these concepts, including the peat crawl and silicon carbide, the more advanced concepts being considered for light water reactor fuel applications, they didn't come out of nowhere. They came out of work that has been done in the broader advanced fuels R&D area. Thank you. I'll just say. I welcome any additions you have for sure. Okay. Yeah, I'm just going to add that, you know, from the NRC's perspective, there's a lot of activity in advanced reactor fuel preparations along with ATF and those people in the NRC communicate with each other. And specific to some questions that have come up here, you know, we're going to be open to avenues that might be applicable to operating reactive fuel. We're not going to be able to help risk inform our approaches. So we don't do those. Those efforts are not being conducted in isolation. All right, so we're down to, go ahead. Let me just add another small plug. I know we're short on time. The actual capabilities today are just really phenomenal. The lower length scale type of post radiation examination capabilities coupled with the high performance computing, as I said earlier, and also with the in situ instrumentation where we can see real time, the material performance under a radiation. These are all things that are going to make the fuel programs more predictive and shorter to market, if you will, from an initial concept. You know, it's just really important to maintain the momentum in those areas. Thanks. All right, I want to thank all the panelists, especially Dr. Jacques Main, who's working overtime to be a participant tonight, tonight for him. And thanks to all the audience for your questions. I wish we could do this in person. Looking forward to next year where we can do that. I'll ask that the final slide be, there it is, final slides will be put up. Again, you can contact the NRC that email address. You can also read more about ATF, the NRC's activities on ATF, high burn up and increase the enrichment fuel there on our website. Again, thank you all and have a great day. Enjoy the rest of the rec.