Effects of transient fission gas release on rod balloon burst behavior during a loss-of-coolant accident

Ian Greenquist; Nathan Capps

doi:10.1016/j.anucene.2023.110213

Effects of transient fission gas release on rod balloon burst behavior during a loss-of-coolant accident

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

The US nuclear energy industry is investigating strategies to increase the reactor operating cycle to 24 months, which would result in rod average burnups exceeding the current limit of 62 GWd/tU. To support this goal, multiphysics simulations tools and methodologies are being developed to predict the effects of this change during transient events such as loss-of-coolant accidents (LOCAs). In this work, two cladding burst correlations were used to predict cladding failure. These were coupled with three transient fission gas release (tFGR) models and were implemented in the BISON fuel performance code to quantify any changes in cladding burst behavior during a large-break LOCA. First, a simple linear model was used to perform a sensitivity analysis of a single fuel rod. Second, a tFGR model available in BISON was applied to 281 fuel rods throughout the core. The third model examined was an empirical correlation based on data from the literature.

Original language	English
Article number	110213
Journal	Annals of Nuclear Energy
Volume	196
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anucene.2023.110213
State	Published - Feb 2024

Funding

This work was prepared for the US Department of Energy (DOE) by Oak Ridge National Laboratory under contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725. This work was supported by the Advanced Fuels Campaign (AFC) of the US Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE). This work would not have been possible without the collaboration and contributions of Southern Nuclear Company. The Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) Program of DOE-NE supported the analysis herein. The authors would like to express appreciation to Jacob Gorton and Danny Schappel of ORNL for their reviews and feedback of this paper. Lastly, this research made use of the High-Performance Computing Center at INL, which is supported by DOE and the Nuclear Science User Facilities under contract No. DE-AC07-05ID14517.

Funders	Funder number
Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Nuclear Energy
Oak Ridge National Laboratory	DE-AC05-00OR22725, DE-AC07-05ID14517

Keywords

Burst Release
FFRD
Fission Gas
High-burnup
LOCA

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10.1016/j.anucene.2023.110213

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abstract = "The US nuclear energy industry is investigating strategies to increase the reactor operating cycle to 24 months, which would result in rod average burnups exceeding the current limit of 62 GWd/tU. To support this goal, multiphysics simulations tools and methodologies are being developed to predict the effects of this change during transient events such as loss-of-coolant accidents (LOCAs). In this work, two cladding burst correlations were used to predict cladding failure. These were coupled with three transient fission gas release (tFGR) models and were implemented in the BISON fuel performance code to quantify any changes in cladding burst behavior during a large-break LOCA. First, a simple linear model was used to perform a sensitivity analysis of a single fuel rod. Second, a tFGR model available in BISON was applied to 281 fuel rods throughout the core. The third model examined was an empirical correlation based on data from the literature.",

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Effects of transient fission gas release on rod balloon burst behavior during a loss-of-coolant accident

Abstract

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Keywords

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