2018 | AFC ACCOMPLISHMENTS 161 Fuel safety research is a vital part of developing and qualifying metal fuels with improved performance, reliability, and safety characteristics. Completed development of a strategic plan for future Fuel Safety Experiments. This was written by Colby Jensen and DanWachs with assistance from Hen Ban from the University of Pittsburgh. This document outlines a strategic plan for safety R&D for metallic fuels.The specific objectives of the safety research program for metallic fuels are to: • Perform and support investigations of performance limiting technical issues for reactor designs (i.e. VersatileTest Reactor (VTR), commercial designs, etc.), • Provide experimental evaluation of fuel behavior under power-to- cooling mismatch scenarios for the development of advanced fuel designs and behavioral models, • Identify fuel failure mechanisms and important failure thresholds while providing various levels of experimental characterization of these to develop, improve, and validate modeling predictive capability, • Provide confirmatory and qualification experimental evaluations for fuel designs to establish margins and support validation of fuel and systems modeling tools. The objectives of this document are to: • Provide a guiding framework for the fuel safety research program supporting development and maturation (and ultimately the licensing basis) of metallic fuels for the NuclearTechnology Research & Development (NTRD) program, • Be a mechanism for consensus and communication for Department of Energy (DOE) programs with specific interest in the performance and behavior of metallic fuels, • Be updated annually to reflect evolving requirements and needs. Conceptual design ofTHOR for separate effects testing for Sodium Fast Reactor (SFR) fuels has progressed by NicolasWoolstenhulme. Some progress was also made in pre-conceptual design of the Metals Fuel Loop development.