2017 | AFC ACCOMPLISHMENTS 46 a corrosive water environment at 360°C (ASTM G2). As shown in Figure 2, the Cr-coated surface exhibits a silver metallic color due to lack of corrosion whereas, the Zr-4 end-plugs appear black due to the formation of ZrO2. AREVA completed the successful qualification of the USW process for Cr-coated tubes at AREVA’s fuel assembly manufacturing plant in Romans, France.The same qualification will be performed at the AREVA Horn Rapid Road (HRR) facility in Richland,WA, prior to the manufacturing of Accident Tolerant Fuel-2 fuel pins. The most promising results of Government FiscalYear (GFY) 2017 are from the Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) irradiations on Cr-coated tubes, which have completed a one-year irradiation cycle in a commercial reactor in Europe. Initial visual examinations on the Cr-coated samples during outage showed positive results.The Cr-coating is very much adherent to the underlying substrate, and no delamination was observed. The transition between the coated and uncoated part of the tubes was smooth, and no particular features were observed.The Cr-layer has a slight golden tint to it, which suggests a minimal oxide formation (< 1µm) on the surface of the clad- ding.This will be confirmed during post-irradiation examinations (PIE) in early 2018.These initial on-site PIE results, after irradiation in a commer- cial PWR, confirm the excellent performance of the Cr-coated clad- ding, which complements the results obtained during the out-of-pile tests. A significant milestone has been achieved to fabricate a full-length Cr-coating prototype machine to deposit Cr on full-length tubes with an improved Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) technique. All Figure 3. The prototype machine for coating full- length tubes.