Accident-Tolerant Fuel Patents: Leaders, Trends & White Space 2026
- Filing already peaked. 2017 was the high point at 7 filings; by the 2022 midpoint annual filings had fallen to zero, and the trend has not recovered since.
- A small, concentrated corpus. Only 18 patent families match this claim scope, filed almost entirely across three receiving offices — EPO, the US and WIPO — with no single office dominating.
- Citations cluster on two families. The two most-cited records, both on high-temperature ceramic fuel systems, draw far more citations than the SiC-cladding filings that follow them.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks patent families claiming accident-tolerant fuel (ATF) technology for light water and fast reactors, filtered to filings that specifically claim coated cladding, chromium-coated cladding, SiC cladding or high-density fuel designs under the core nuclear-reactor IPC classes. It excludes broader reactor-safety filings that do not reach this claim depth.
The corpus is small — 18 families — which is itself informative: this is a narrow, technically demanding claim space rather than a broad one, and a handful of well-cited families have set the reference points that later filings had to design around or cite.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Publication figures for the most recent one to two years understate real filing activity, since publication typically lags filing by around 18 months. Read the tail of any trend line with that lag in mind.
A peak in 2017, then a flat-to-declining tail
Filings peaked at 7 in 2017 and had fallen to zero by the 2022 midpoint; the years since show no sustained recovery, though the most recent one to two years are undercounted due to publication lag.
Concentrated in G21C, with adjacent classes barely touched
All 18 records sit under G21C (nuclear reactors); a smaller group of 4 also touches G21G (conversion of nuclei), and only single records reach into B32B (layered products) or C04B (ceramics). That imbalance is where the claim space is thin, not the core class.
Shares are the percentage of the 18 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
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High temperature ceramic nuclear fuel system for light water reactors and lead fast reactors
Filed by Westinghouse Electric Company, this family (rendered here via its European grant, EP3685407B1) claims a high-temperature ceramic fuel system aimed at both light water reactors and lead-cooled fast reactors — one of the two most-cited families in the dataset and a direct citation anchor for the SiC-cladding filings that followed it.Grant date and assignee are rendered from the underlying record.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20190139654A1 | High temperature nuclear fuel system for thermal neutron reactors | 21 |
| 2 | US20190088376A1 | High temperature ceramic nuclear fuel system for light water reactors and lead fast reactors | 16 |
| 3 | US20170358372A1 | Zirconium-coated silicon carbide fuel cladding for accident tolerant fuel application | 11 |
| 4 | WO2018044371A2 | Zirconium-coated silicon carbide fuel cladding for accident tolerant fuel application | 4 |
| 5 | WO2019060154A2 | High temperature ceramic nuclear fuel system for light water reactors and lead fast reactors | 3 |
| 6 | WO2018044371A3 | Zirconium-coated silicon carbide fuel cladding for accident tolerant fuel application | 2 |
| 7 | US10515728B2 | High temperature ceramic nuclear fuel system for light water reactors and lead fast reactors | 1 |
Citation counts favour older records in any searched corpus; treat them as a signal of influence on later filings, not of current commercial importance.
Publication numbers are shown where the record carries one (7 of 7 rows); clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns stand out once the family count and citation structure are set side by side: a stalled filing curve, a two-family citation core, and a claim space that has stayed almost entirely inside one IPC subclass.
The filing curve has gone flat
Annual filings peaked at 7 in 2017 and had dropped to zero by 2022, with no clear rebound since. Combined with the small total family count, this reads as a technology whose core claim positions were staked out early and then left largely undisturbed.
Two ceramic-fuel families anchor the field
The two most-cited records both cover high-temperature ceramic fuel systems for light water and lead fast reactors; the next-ranked SiC-cladding families trail well behind on citation count, suggesting the ceramic-fuel claims became the reference point later filers had to cite or design around.
Almost everything sits inside one IPC subclass
Every record in this landscape touches G21C (nuclear reactors), and only a handful extend into G21G, B32B or C04B. That concentration means the reactor-integration claims are dense, while the materials-science side of the same technology — layered cladding structures, ceramic processing — is comparatively open.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to accident-tolerant fuel nuclear fuel, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claim space
With only 18 families in total, this landscape does not support a long ranked table of assignees the way larger corpora do. What the data does show is a receiving-office split — Europe and the US each with 7, WIPO with 4 — and a citation core built by a small number of filers rather than a broad field of entrants.
Filing is split across three jurisdictions, not concentrated in one
EPO and US filings are tied at 7 each, with WIPO (PCT) filings at 4. That balance suggests filers here are pursuing parallel protection in Europe and the US rather than treating either as a secondary market.
Westinghouse-originated filings anchor the ceramic-fuel citation core
The representative record, EP3685407B1, covers a high-temperature ceramic fuel system for light water and lead fast reactors and sits among the two most-cited families in the dataset, both tracing to the same underlying ceramic-fuel technology family.
A small field with no long tail of recent entrants
Eighteen families across more than a decade is a narrow field by patent-landscape standards. It points to a technically specific claim space rather than one where many companies are actively staking out new positions year over year.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Westinghouse Electric Company | 0 | — |
Where to take this
The dataset points to specific next checks rather than general monitoring.
Check the SiC-cladding sub-branch for freedom to operate
The zirconium-coated SiC cladding families rank third and fourth by citation count but trail the ceramic-fuel core by a wide margin — worth a closer freedom-to-operate read before filing new cladding-geometry claims.
Explore cladding claims in EurekaModel the materials-science white space
With only single records in B32B and C04B against 18 in G21C, the layered-structure and ceramic-processing angles remain comparatively open relative to reactor-integration claims.
Run a white-space search in EurekaTrack whether the filing stall reverses
Filings dropped to zero by the 2022 midpoint; the next one to two published years, once past the reporting lag, will show whether this is a genuine plateau or a temporary gap.
Set a filing-trend alert in EurekaCommon questions on accident-tolerant fuel patents
In this landscape, ATF patents are filings that claim coated cladding, chromium-coated cladding, SiC cladding or high-density fuel designs under the core nuclear-reactor IPC classes (G21C3/07, G21C3/20, G21C3/62). This is narrower than general reactor-safety patents; it requires the claims to reach a specific materials or cladding-design depth rather than describing safety systems in general terms. Filings that mention ATF only in passing, without claiming one of these specific designs, fall outside this dataset.
The dataset is small, at 18 patent families, so it does not support a broad ranked list of assignees the way larger technology areas do. Westinghouse Electric Company is represented among the most-cited records, including the high-temperature ceramic fuel system family referenced in this landscape. Beyond that, filing activity is split fairly evenly across receiving offices rather than dominated by one company.
Based on the published record, filing activity peaked in 2017 at 7 filings and had fallen to zero by the 2022 midpoint, with no clear recovery since. Publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, so the most recent one to two years in any dataset will always look thinner than they eventually turn out to be. Even accounting for that lag, the multi-year stall from a 2017 peak suggests core claim positions were staked out early rather than a field still actively expanding.
Silicon carbide (SiC) cladding is one of the materials routes to accident-tolerant fuel, aimed at replacing or coating traditional zirconium-alloy cladding to improve high-temperature performance during accident scenarios. In this dataset, zirconium-coated SiC cladding families rank among the most-cited records, though well behind the top two ceramic-fuel-system families. That citation gap suggests SiC-cladding claims are an active but secondary cluster relative to the ceramic-fuel core.
The clearest gap is outside the core G21C (nuclear reactors) classification: all 18 families in this dataset touch G21C, but only single records extend into B32B (layered products and laminates) or C04B (ceramics, cement and refractories). That imbalance points to layered-cladding structural claims and ceramic-processing method claims as comparatively open relative to the densely claimed reactor-integration space. A team evaluating where to file first claims would do well to check these adjacent classes before assuming the core space is the only option.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.