Analysis of advanced nuclear fuel frontier technology on the basis of the patents

With the increasingly prominent global climate issues and the continuous reduction of traditional energy, nuclear energy, as an efficient and clean energy source, is becoming increasingly important in energy supply. In recent years, countries such as the United States and France have proposed advanced reactor plans to promote the development of fourth-generation advanced nuclear energy systems internationally to further increase the utilization of nuclear energy. Currently, the main nuclear power reactor types in operation worldwide are pressurized water reactors, and high-temperature gas-cooled reactors are the advanced reactor types that have developed rapidly in later stages. As the source of nuclear energy, the design and development of advanced nuclear fuels are the key to developing advanced reactors. High burnup uranium oxide fuel (UO₂ fuel), Accident Tolerant Fuel (ATF), and tri-structural ISOtropic (TRISO) have developed rapidly in areas such as fuel pellet design, fuel component performance improvement, and detection analysis. Patents, as important commercial and technological information resources, reflect future technological development trends. In order to fully understand the current status and trends of scientific and technological development of nuclear fuels in recent years, we conducted quantitative and qualitative analysis of global patents related to nuclear fuels, studied the technological source of advanced nuclear fuel technologies and the status of innovation, analyzed the competitive hotspots of technology research and development, and revealed the future development trends of advanced reactor types such as UO₂, ATF, and TRISO.