2018 | AFC ACCOMPLISHMENTS 35 economic to operate.The approach to the project is to enlist and integrate findings from the basic experimental and simulation research tools of the national laboratories to the fuel design and fabrication capabilities of Global Nuclear Fuels to the practical engineering skills of the commercial electrical power companies. Accomplishments: The Phase 2a (2017-2018) was very successful and included the insertion of IronClad and ARMOR components in the Hatch 1 nuclear plant in February 2018.The main goals of Phase 2b (2019-2021) are (1) to carry a second insertion into a commercial reactor, which is the Exelon Generation Clinton Plant in the Fall of 2019 and (2)To evaluate the initial post neutron irradiation exami- nation of IronClad and ARMOR rods from the INL AdvancedTest Reactor (ATR) and from the Hatch commercial power plant.Significant efforts were invested in the tube making process of FeCrAl alloys both at Sandvik and at US plants such as SuperiorTube and CenturyTube.YukinoriYamamoto from ORNL was the lead in the success of the tube effort. Two primary alloy producers (Metaltek in Wisconsin and Sophis- ticated Alloys in Pennsylvania) are fabricating ingots of C26M for tube production purposes. Steam testing showed that C26M alloy is as resistant to attack by steam as APMT. High temperature (~300°C) hydrogenated and oxygenated water electrochemical testing showed that C26M and APMT behave in a similar manner as well-known reactor mate- rials such as nickel alloy X-750 and stainless steel type 304. GE/Global Nuclear Fuel (GNF) is working with utilities such as Southern Nuclear to insert the first FeCrAl fuel prototype into a commer- cial reactor in the US.The plant selected for the first effort is SNC’s Plant Hatch, Unit 1 during the Cycle 29 refueling outage (1Q18). It is planned to insert 2-8 Lead Fuel Rods (LFRs) into each of 2-4 GNF2 Lead Test Assemblies (LTAs) as segmented rods of the two FeCrAl alloys mentioned before (APMT and C26M). GNF/GE-Hitachi (GEH) and Southern interfaced with the Nuclear Regula- tory Commission (NRC) to obtain the authorizations to transport the fuel to the Georgia plant and to install the LTA into the reactors. The GE ARMOR and IronClad concepts for Accident Tolerant Fuel (ATF) are the most near term retrofit solutions for Generation III reactors involving minimal changes in reactor configuration.