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The purpose of this work is to investigate the implementation of nitride fuels containing little or no uranium in a fast-spectrum nuclear reactor to reduce the amount of plutonium and minor actinides in spent nuclear fuel destined for the Yucca Mountain Repository. A two tier recycling strategy is proposed. Thermal spectrum transmutation systems converted from the existing LWR fleet were modeled for the first tier, and the Japanese fast reactor MONJU was used for the fast-spectrum transmutation. The modeling was performed with the Monteburns code. Transmutation performance was investigated as well as delayed neutron fraction, heat generation rates, and radioactivity of the spent material in the short and long term for the different transmutation fuel cycles. A two-tier recycling strategy incorporating fast and thermal transmutation with uranium-free nitride fuel was shown to reduce the long-term heat generation rates and radioactivity of the spent nuclear fuel inventory.

Mathematical modeling helps researchers to understand the transport and kinetic phenomena within fuel cells and their effects on fuel cell performance that may not be evident from experimental work. In this thesis, a 2-D steady-state cathode model of a proton-exchange-membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is developed. The kinetics of the cathode half-reaction were investigated, specifically the reaction order with respect to oxygen concentration. It is unknown whether this reaction order is one or one half. First- and half-order reaction models were simulated and their influence on the predicted fuel cell performance was examined. At low overpotentials near 0.3 V, the half-order model predicted smaller current densities (approximately half that of the first-order model). At higher overpotentials above 0.5 V, the predicted current density of the half-order model is slightly higher than that of the first-order model. The effect of oxygen concentration at the channel/porous transport layer boundary was also simulated and it was shown the predicted current density of the first-order model experienced a larger decrease (~10-15% difference at low overpotentials) than the half-order model. Several other phenomena in the cathode model were also examined. The kinetic parameters (exchange current density and cathode transfer coefficient) were adjusted to assume a single Tafel slope, rather than a double Tafel slope, resulting in a significant improvement in the predicted fuel cell performance. Anisotropic electronic conductivities and mass diffusivities were added to cathode model so that the anisotropic structure of the porous transport layer was taken into account. As expected, the simulations showed improved performance at low current densities due to a higher electronic conductivity in the in-plane direction and decreased performance at high current densities due to smaller diffusivities. Additionally, the concentration overpotential was accounted for in the model; however it had little influence on the simulation results. / Thesis (Master, Chemical Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2008-09-19 12:14:29.079

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<p>The main objective of this work it to produce membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs) that have improved performance over MEAs produced by the conventional manner, by producing highly efficient, electroactive, uniform catalyst layers with lower quantities of platinum electrocatalyst. The catalyst coated membrane (CCM) method was used to prepare the MEAs for the PEM fuel cell as it has been reported that this method of MEA fabrication can improve the performance of PEM fuel cells. The MEAs performances were evaluated using polarisation studies on a single cell. A comparison of polarisation curves between CCM MEAs and MEAs produced in the conventional manner illustrated that CCM MEAs have improved performance at high current densities (&gt / 800 mA/cm2).</p>

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