Separate effects irradiation testing of miniature fuel specimens

Christian M. Petrie; Joseph R. Burns; Alicia M. Raftery; Andrew T. Nelson; Kurt A. Terrani

doi:10.1016/j.jnucmat.2019.151783

Separate effects irradiation testing of miniature fuel specimens

Christian M. Petrie, Joseph R. Burns, Alicia M. Raftery, Andrew T. Nelson, Kurt A. Terrani

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

37 Scopus citations

Abstract

Qualification of new nuclear fuels is necessary for their deployment and requires a thorough understanding of fuel behavior under irradiation. Traditionally, nuclear fuels have been qualified by performing exhaustive integral tests under a limited range of prototypic conditions designed for their specific reactor application. While some integral fuel testing is essential, basic data on behavior and property evolution under irradiation can be obtained from separate effects tests. These irradiations could offer reduced cost, reduced complexity, and in the case of accelerated testing, reduced time to achieve a given burnup. Furthermore, it may be desirable to design test irradiations capable of deconvoluting the myriad effects of burnup, temperature gradients, and other factors inherent to integral irradiation tests. Oak Ridge National Laboratory has developed an experimental capability to perform separate effects irradiation testing of miniature fuel specimens in the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR): the “MiniFuel” irradiation vehicle. The small size (<4 mm³) of the fuel specimens simplifies the design, analysis, and post-irradiation examination. By reducing the fuel mass, the total heat generated inside the experiment vehicle can be dominated by gamma heating in the structural materials instead of fission heating in the fuel. This essentially decouples the fuel temperature from the fission rate, allowing for highly accelerated testing (3X−18X the burnup rate of a typical light water reactor for ²³⁵U enrichments varying from 0.22 wt% to 8 wt%) and an extremely flexible experiment design that can accommodate a wide range of fuel temperatures (∼100 °C to >1200 °C), compositions, enrichments, and even geometries without requiring detailed analyses for each fuel variant. This paper summarizes the experiment design concept, evaluates potential applications for specific fuel forms, and briefly describes the first set of experiments on uranium nitride kernels that have been assembled and are currently being irradiated in the HFIR.

Original language	English
Article number	151783
Journal	Journal of Nuclear Materials
Volume	526
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnucmat.2019.151783
State	Published - Dec 1 2019

Funding

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).This work is supported by the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Nuclear Energy, Advanced Fuels Campaign. A portion of this research uses resources at the HFIR, a DOE Office of Science User Facility operated by ORNL. The paper is authored by UT-Battelle under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US DOE. Robert Morris assisted in the development of the hot cell puncturing system to be used for measuring fission gas release and provided valuable insights and guidance. David Bryant assisted with capsule assembly. Joel McDuffee and Josh Peterson-Droogh performed reviews of the thermal and neutronic calculations supporting this work. This work is supported by the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Nuclear Energy, Advanced Fuels Campaign . A portion of this research uses resources at the HFIR, a DOE Office of Science User Facility operated by ORNL. The paper is authored by UT-Battelle under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US DOE. Robert Morris assisted in the development of the hot cell puncturing system to be used for measuring fission gas release and provided valuable insights and guidance. David Bryant assisted with capsule assembly. Joel McDuffee and Josh Peterson-Droogh performed reviews of the thermal and neutronic calculations supporting this work.

Keywords

Burnup
Fuel
Irradiation
Separate effects

Access to Document

10.1016/j.jnucmat.2019.151783

Cite this

@article{e419d2a0dae14d73a09b957520361337,

title = "Separate effects irradiation testing of miniature fuel specimens",

abstract = "Qualification of new nuclear fuels is necessary for their deployment and requires a thorough understanding of fuel behavior under irradiation. Traditionally, nuclear fuels have been qualified by performing exhaustive integral tests under a limited range of prototypic conditions designed for their specific reactor application. While some integral fuel testing is essential, basic data on behavior and property evolution under irradiation can be obtained from separate effects tests. These irradiations could offer reduced cost, reduced complexity, and in the case of accelerated testing, reduced time to achieve a given burnup. Furthermore, it may be desirable to design test irradiations capable of deconvoluting the myriad effects of burnup, temperature gradients, and other factors inherent to integral irradiation tests. Oak Ridge National Laboratory has developed an experimental capability to perform separate effects irradiation testing of miniature fuel specimens in the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR): the “MiniFuel” irradiation vehicle. The small size (<4 mm3) of the fuel specimens simplifies the design, analysis, and post-irradiation examination. By reducing the fuel mass, the total heat generated inside the experiment vehicle can be dominated by gamma heating in the structural materials instead of fission heating in the fuel. This essentially decouples the fuel temperature from the fission rate, allowing for highly accelerated testing (3X−18X the burnup rate of a typical light water reactor for 235U enrichments varying from 0.22 wt% to 8 wt%) and an extremely flexible experiment design that can accommodate a wide range of fuel temperatures (∼100 °C to >1200 °C), compositions, enrichments, and even geometries without requiring detailed analyses for each fuel variant. This paper summarizes the experiment design concept, evaluates potential applications for specific fuel forms, and briefly describes the first set of experiments on uranium nitride kernels that have been assembled and are currently being irradiated in the HFIR.",

keywords = "Burnup, Fuel, Irradiation, Separate effects",

author = "Petrie, {Christian M.} and Burns, {Joseph R.} and Raftery, {Alicia M.} and Nelson, {Andrew T.} and Terrani, {Kurt A.}",

note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2019",

year = "2019",

month = dec,

day = "1",

doi = "10.1016/j.jnucmat.2019.151783",

language = "English",

volume = "526",

journal = "Journal of Nuclear Materials",

issn = "0022-3115",

publisher = "Elsevier",

}

TY - JOUR

T1 - Separate effects irradiation testing of miniature fuel specimens

AU - Petrie, Christian M.

AU - Burns, Joseph R.

AU - Raftery, Alicia M.

AU - Nelson, Andrew T.

AU - Terrani, Kurt A.

PY - 2019/12/1

Y1 - 2019/12/1

N2 - Qualification of new nuclear fuels is necessary for their deployment and requires a thorough understanding of fuel behavior under irradiation. Traditionally, nuclear fuels have been qualified by performing exhaustive integral tests under a limited range of prototypic conditions designed for their specific reactor application. While some integral fuel testing is essential, basic data on behavior and property evolution under irradiation can be obtained from separate effects tests. These irradiations could offer reduced cost, reduced complexity, and in the case of accelerated testing, reduced time to achieve a given burnup. Furthermore, it may be desirable to design test irradiations capable of deconvoluting the myriad effects of burnup, temperature gradients, and other factors inherent to integral irradiation tests. Oak Ridge National Laboratory has developed an experimental capability to perform separate effects irradiation testing of miniature fuel specimens in the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR): the “MiniFuel” irradiation vehicle. The small size (<4 mm3) of the fuel specimens simplifies the design, analysis, and post-irradiation examination. By reducing the fuel mass, the total heat generated inside the experiment vehicle can be dominated by gamma heating in the structural materials instead of fission heating in the fuel. This essentially decouples the fuel temperature from the fission rate, allowing for highly accelerated testing (3X−18X the burnup rate of a typical light water reactor for 235U enrichments varying from 0.22 wt% to 8 wt%) and an extremely flexible experiment design that can accommodate a wide range of fuel temperatures (∼100 °C to >1200 °C), compositions, enrichments, and even geometries without requiring detailed analyses for each fuel variant. This paper summarizes the experiment design concept, evaluates potential applications for specific fuel forms, and briefly describes the first set of experiments on uranium nitride kernels that have been assembled and are currently being irradiated in the HFIR.

AB - Qualification of new nuclear fuels is necessary for their deployment and requires a thorough understanding of fuel behavior under irradiation. Traditionally, nuclear fuels have been qualified by performing exhaustive integral tests under a limited range of prototypic conditions designed for their specific reactor application. While some integral fuel testing is essential, basic data on behavior and property evolution under irradiation can be obtained from separate effects tests. These irradiations could offer reduced cost, reduced complexity, and in the case of accelerated testing, reduced time to achieve a given burnup. Furthermore, it may be desirable to design test irradiations capable of deconvoluting the myriad effects of burnup, temperature gradients, and other factors inherent to integral irradiation tests. Oak Ridge National Laboratory has developed an experimental capability to perform separate effects irradiation testing of miniature fuel specimens in the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR): the “MiniFuel” irradiation vehicle. The small size (<4 mm3) of the fuel specimens simplifies the design, analysis, and post-irradiation examination. By reducing the fuel mass, the total heat generated inside the experiment vehicle can be dominated by gamma heating in the structural materials instead of fission heating in the fuel. This essentially decouples the fuel temperature from the fission rate, allowing for highly accelerated testing (3X−18X the burnup rate of a typical light water reactor for 235U enrichments varying from 0.22 wt% to 8 wt%) and an extremely flexible experiment design that can accommodate a wide range of fuel temperatures (∼100 °C to >1200 °C), compositions, enrichments, and even geometries without requiring detailed analyses for each fuel variant. This paper summarizes the experiment design concept, evaluates potential applications for specific fuel forms, and briefly describes the first set of experiments on uranium nitride kernels that have been assembled and are currently being irradiated in the HFIR.

KW - Burnup

KW - Fuel

KW - Irradiation

KW - Separate effects

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85071858469&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.jnucmat.2019.151783

DO - 10.1016/j.jnucmat.2019.151783

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85071858469

SN - 0022-3115

VL - 526

JO - Journal of Nuclear Materials

JF - Journal of Nuclear Materials

M1 - 151783

ER -

Separate effects irradiation testing of miniature fuel specimens

Abstract

Funding

Keywords

Access to Document

Other files and links

Fingerprint

Cite this