Abstract
A new formulation for redistribution of constituents in metallic U-Pu-Zr nuclear fuel is presented that can incorporate the contributions from fission products. The formulation is based on the thermodynamic driving forces derived from the generalized chemical potential that includes effects of composition and temperature. As a result, the redistribution model can readily account for the composition changes due to the generation of fission products while using only a limited set of transport coefficients. The thermodynamic model for the metallic fuel and thermochemistry solver Thermochimica were coupled with the nuclear fuel performance code BISON to implement the redistribution model. The simulations reproduce an experimentally observed Zr-depletion zone in the mid-radius region of an irradiated fuel slug. The generation of fission products during burnup is shown to have a stabilizing effect on the fuel chemistry, slowing the rate of U-Zr interdiffusion and reducing the size of the Zr-depleted zone. The overall objective of the work is to advance predictive capabilities of fission product behaviour in U-Zr metallic fuel in the context of fuel performance and safety.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 153089 |
| Journal | Journal of Nuclear Materials |
| Volume | 554 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 2021 |
Funding
Research was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation Program and Fuel Cycle R&D Program, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with UT-Battelle, LLC. Notice of Copyright. This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with th U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy 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 research was undertaken, in part, thanks to funding from the Canada Research Chairs program (950–231328) of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
Keywords
- Bison
- Metallic fuel
- Sodium fast reactor
- Thermochemistry
- Thermochimica
- U-Zr