| Currently there is no comprehensive plan available for the methodology, timeline, and cost structure needed when licensing for new nuclear fuels, cladding, and geometry. By combining various sources from the NRC, nuclear vendor documents, and experience from engineers who have worked on licensing standard nuclear materials, a methodology, timeline, and cost structure for licensing new fuels, cladding, and geometry was developed. The specific scenarios of fuels, cladding, and geometry were used to outline the common advantages and disadvantages of changing the physical properties or physical structure of the standard nuclear fuel assembly. From these changes, the timeline and costing analyses were performed. It was determined from the timeline and costing analyses that the most advantageous development scenario was to combine the fuel and cladding licensing together and license the fuel/cladding combination for over 100 Gigawatt-days per metric ton of uranium. |
