2017 | AFC ACCOMPLISHMENTS 178 3.4 AR IrradiationTesting & PIETechniques Progress and Status of Irradiations in the AFC Series in ATR Principal Investigator: Steven Hayes/Gary Povirk Collaborators: Doug Dempsey The Idaho National Laboratory (INL), through the Depart- ment of Energy (DOE) Idaho Operations Office, has been assigned the responsibility of fabricating and irradiating advanced nuclear fuels and materials in the AdvancedTest Reactor (ATR).The AFC-OA series irradiation experiments will evaluate fuels and materials performance for advanced nuclear systems. Irradiation experi- ments may include a range of fuel and material forms and compositions from prototypic miniature fuel rods design to evaluate integral performance to small samples designed to evaluate separate effects. Fuel forms currently under investigation include metallic, oxide, and other ceramics. Fuel compositions may include historic binary and ternary metallic alloys and conventional oxide and mixed oxide (MOX) fuels, minor actinides to study transmutation, lanthanide additions to simulate reprocessing effects, and alloying additions to influence constituent redistribution. Accomplishments: Two AFC experiments are currently in the irradiation phase of the experiment, AFC 3F and AFC-4C. Their current irradiation status is summarized in Tables 1 and 2 the following tables: Transmutation of the long-lived transuranic actinide isotopes contained in spent nuclear fuel into shorter- lived fission products would dramatically decrease the volume of material requiring disposal and the longer- term radiotoxicity and heat load of high-level waste sent to a geologic repository.