Abstract
Burst behavior of austenitic and ferritic Fe-based alloy tubes has been examined under a simulated large break loss of coolant accident. Specifically, type 304 stainless steel (304SS) and oxidation resistant FeCrAl tubes were studied alongside Zircaloy-2 and Zircaloy-4 that are considered reference fuel cladding materials. Following the burst test, characterization of the cladding materials was carried out to gain insights regarding the integral burst behavior. Given the widespread availability of a comprehensive set of thermo-mechanical data at elevated temperatures for 304SS, a modeling framework was implemented to simulate the various processes that affect burst behavior in this Fe-based alloy. The most important conclusion is that cladding ballooning due to creep is negligible for Fe-based alloys. Thus, unlike Zr-based alloys, cladding cross-sectional area remains largely unchanged up to the point of burst. Therefore, for a given rod internal pressure, the temperature onset of burst in Fe-based alloys appears to be simply a function of the alloy's ultimate tensile strength, particularly at high rod internal pressures.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 128-138 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | Journal of Nuclear Materials |
| Volume | 470 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 1 2016 |
Funding
The aid and technical insight of Mike Howell, Yong Yan, Yuri Kato, and Lance Snead at ORNL is gratefully acknowledged. Stuart Maloy at Los Alamos National Laboratory organized FeCrAl tube production at Century Tubes Inc., San Diego, CA. Maxim Gussev, Yukinori Yamamoto, and Byoungkoo Kim provided useful comments on the manuscript. The work presented in this paper was supported by the Advanced Fuels Campaign of the Fuel Cycle R&D program in the Office of Nuclear Energy, US Department of Energy .