The subject of fuel performance is of international importance in the nuclear industry. It has attracted significant attention in all the major countries operating nuclear plant, particularly in France, Germany, Japan, US and the UK.

Good fuel performance is a necessity for utilities and the major advances are driven by the utilities requirements. For example for LWRs, as discussed in the previous section, the use of MOX fuel and the potential to use RU from reprocessing is a particular current interest.

In the UK, within its gas reactor programme, much experience has been gained from many years of successful Magnox and AGR operation. The fuel performance in AGRs has been very good in matching the performance of most other reactor types. Similarly experience on fast reactor fuel performance has been gained in the UK and France; this has helped to support the fuel design for the EFR.