Abstract
Development and qualification of nuclear fuel for commercial application requires fundamental material development and characterization; out-of-pile testing on unirradiated materials; integral fuel rod irradiations, testing, and post irradiation examinations (PIEs); and transient analyses. Historically, this has depended on generation of large empirical datasets and series of integral fuel rod irradiations ultimately taking approximately 20 years or more to acquire data through extensive sequential testing. Although qualification and deployment of new fuel systems is a long, drawn-out process, recent advancements provide the opportunity to perform out-of-cell in-situ measurements to assess material performance for the duration of the experiment, ultimately limiting the number of out-of-cell tests to better inform expensive in-cell integral tests. One example of this capability is the use of digital image coordination and thermal imaging to assess Zircaloy cladding performance under a simulated loss-of-coolant transient condition. In general, in-situ measurements provide high-fidelity time and spatially dependent strain, strain rates, and temperature maps. This is critical for the US nuclear industry's active development of a technical basis to support extending the peak rod average burnup from 62 to ~75 GWd/tU. In their research information letter, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission outlines technical issues that industry must address to extend burnup. One key objective is to understand the balloon-and-rupture geometry of cladding during the loss-of-coolant accident heat-up phase. In-situ data generated from a simulated loss-of-coolant accident in the Severe Accident Test Station at Oak Ridge National Laboratory will be used to analyze high-temperature creep and its impact on Zircaloy balloon-and-rupture performance. This work will validate BISON fuel performance code and the Zircaloy high-temperature creep model predictions of in-situ data and will identify model limitations.
| Original language | English |
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| Title of host publication | Proceedings of TopFuel 2022 Light Water Reactor Fuel Performance Conference |
| Publisher | American Nuclear Society |
| Pages | 396-400 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9780894487941 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2022 |
| Event | TopFuel 2022 Light Water Reactor Fuel Performance Conference - Raleigh, United States Duration: Oct 9 2022 → Oct 13 2022 |
Publication series
| Name | Proceedings of TopFuel 2022 Light Water Reactor Fuel Performance Conference |
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Conference
| Conference | TopFuel 2022 Light Water Reactor Fuel Performance Conference |
|---|---|
| Country/Territory | United States |
| City | Raleigh |
| Period | 10/9/22 → 10/13/22 |
Funding
Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation Program (NEAMS), US Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, supported the fuel analysis. Experimental contributions were made by the Advanced Fuels Campaign (AFC): without AFC support, this work would not be possible. The authors would like to express appreciation to OR’NL s Mackenzie Ridley and Ian Greenquist for their support in the review of this manuscript. Lastly, this research made use of the resources of the High Performance Computing Center at Idaho National Laboratory, which is supported by the Office of Nuclear Energy of the U.S. Department of Energy and the Nuclear Science User Facilities under Contract No. DE-AC07-05ID14517. This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy (DOE). The US government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for US government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan).