Artificial Intelligence Enhanced Advanced Post Irradiation Examination

This project uses post irradiation examination of uranium-10wt.% zirconium (UZr) metallic fuel as a case study to show how artificial intelligence (AI)-based technology can facilitate and accelerate nuclear fuel development. The approach will 1) revisit the microstructural image and local thermal conductivity data collected from UZr, 2) build a benchmark dataset for the microstructural patterns of irradiated UZr, and 3) train the machine learning and deep learning models to uncover the relationships between micro/nanoscale structure, zirconium phase redistribution, local thermal conductivity, and engineering scale fuel properties.