Westinghouse Use of Advanced Material Modeling to Accelerate Fuel Development and Qualification

The development time of nuclear materials, from the realization of a need to having the new material in a commercial product takes several decades. Reducing unnecessary safety margins in fuel rod modeling takes additionally many years to produce the required data. One approach that has been used to reduce the time it takes is the use of mechanistic modeling. By modeling the material properties focusing on physical mechanisms instead of empirical correlations, an accrued understanding can be gained and used to optimize development and licensing processes. This document presents how Westinghouse uses mechanistic modeling on coating and fuel products at various stages of the development. Novel methods are used to inform the models, such as accelerated experiments, in-rod sensors or lower length modeling. The focus of this article is put on the later, with a special emphasis on the licensing stage. In-house efforts and collaborations to inform material choices, design experiments, improve reproducibility through establishing modeling guidelines and determine the exact benefits that these methods can bring during the licensing phase are presented.