Abstract
The U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Fuels Campaign (AFC) is currently
funding research and development on a number of fuel technologies for light water reactors (LWRs) that could provide enhanced performance under accident
scenarios relative to the current zirconium alloy-uranium dioxide (UO2) fuel
system. The overall mission of the accident tolerant fuel (ATF) research is to
develop advanced fuels/cladding with improved performance, reliability and safety characteristics during normal operations and accident conditions, while minimizing waste generation. Evaluating the performance of candidate ATF concepts is a topic of significant discussion among researchers, fuel vendors and utilities to ensure that the developed concepts can meet minimum performance and economic requirements, can be developed within a reasonable time, and can be approved for insertion as a lead fuel rod in a commercial reactor by the 2022 goal established in the U.S. Characterizing the performance enhancements of candidate ATF first requires understanding the performance of the current Zr-UO2 system under equivalent operations and accident scenarios. Proper evaluation of each concept is dependent on development of data through focused out-of-pile and in-core experiments to support modeling of the fuel and cladding behavior in fuel performance and systems analysis codes; complementary irradiation of ATF concepts will be discussed in a separate paper. This paper will provide an overview of the key evaluation tools and evaluation scenarios currently being considered within the LWR community for ATF. The evaluation toolset includes standard neutronic and thermal-hydraulic analysis for normal operating conditions and transient/accident conditions and analysis of severe accident behavior using modified versions of the MELCOR code for preliminary concept screening. Development of advanced fuel performance analysis using the BISON application based on the Multi-physics Object-Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE) at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) has also been initiated. Evaluation scenarios (e.g. accident scenarios) currently being discussed for use across the international ATF development teams are also presented.
funding research and development on a number of fuel technologies for light water reactors (LWRs) that could provide enhanced performance under accident
scenarios relative to the current zirconium alloy-uranium dioxide (UO2) fuel
system. The overall mission of the accident tolerant fuel (ATF) research is to
develop advanced fuels/cladding with improved performance, reliability and safety characteristics during normal operations and accident conditions, while minimizing waste generation. Evaluating the performance of candidate ATF concepts is a topic of significant discussion among researchers, fuel vendors and utilities to ensure that the developed concepts can meet minimum performance and economic requirements, can be developed within a reasonable time, and can be approved for insertion as a lead fuel rod in a commercial reactor by the 2022 goal established in the U.S. Characterizing the performance enhancements of candidate ATF first requires understanding the performance of the current Zr-UO2 system under equivalent operations and accident scenarios. Proper evaluation of each concept is dependent on development of data through focused out-of-pile and in-core experiments to support modeling of the fuel and cladding behavior in fuel performance and systems analysis codes; complementary irradiation of ATF concepts will be discussed in a separate paper. This paper will provide an overview of the key evaluation tools and evaluation scenarios currently being considered within the LWR community for ATF. The evaluation toolset includes standard neutronic and thermal-hydraulic analysis for normal operating conditions and transient/accident conditions and analysis of severe accident behavior using modified versions of the MELCOR code for preliminary concept screening. Development of advanced fuel performance analysis using the BISON application based on the Multi-physics Object-Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE) at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) has also been initiated. Evaluation scenarios (e.g. accident scenarios) currently being discussed for use across the international ATF development teams are also presented.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages | 97-106 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| State | Published - Sep 2015 |
Publication series
| Name | proceedings of Top Fuel |
|---|
Keywords
- accident tolerant fuel
- enhanced LWR fuel
INL Publication Number
- INL/CON-15-34936
- 25846
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