In-reactor verification of advanced nuclear fuel, PLUS7{sup TM}, for KSNPs
- Korea Nuclear Fuel Co., Ltd., 493 Deogjin-dong, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, 305-353 (Korea, Republic of)
Advanced nuclear fuel, PLUS7{sup TM}, for Korean standard nuclear power plants (KSNPs) has been verified in commercial reactor. This fuel developed jointly with Westinghouse has seven outstanding advantages in comparison of the existing fuel: average burnup of 55 GWD/MTU at the region application, over 10% overpower margin, 0.3 g seismic performance, free from failure induced by debris fretting, free from failure induced by grid-to-rod fretting, improved manufacturability, and economic enhancement, etc. Out-of-pile performance had been confirmed through the extensive test program during the development period. After manufacturing four lead test assemblies (LTAs), in-reactor verification has been performed successfully. This paper describes the in-reactor performance of the advanced fuel, PLUS7{sup TM}. While the fuel was being irradiated, the coolant activity and the power of LTAs were measured periodically for confirming the fuel integrity and the design prediction of the power distribution. During the refueling outages after each cycle, three times of pool-side examinations (PSEs) has been performed. Burnup-dependent parameters, which are fuel assembly growth, fuel rod growth, grid width growth, fuel assembly bow, fuel rod bow, fuel assembly twist, fuel rod diameter, and fuel cladding oxide thickness, were measured and evaluated to confirm if they remained within the design limits. All burnup-dependent parameters were confirmed to remain within their expected ranges after three cycle irradiation. After the successful irradiation during two cycles, this fuel was being loaded to eight commercially operating KSNPs. Continuously, this fuel will be supplied to four plants of 1000 MWe being constructed and another four plants of 1400 MWe being planned in Korea. The additional detail examinations including the reconstitution performance, fuel rod inspection and hot cell examination, etc. were planned for further verification. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- American Nuclear Society, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 21229279
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 2007 LWR Fuel Performance Meeting / TopFuel 2007, San Francisco, CA (United States), 30 Sep - 3 Oct 2007; Other Information: Country of input: France; 3 refs; Related Information: In: Proceedings of the 2007 LWR Fuel Performance Meeting / TopFuel 2007 'Zero by 2010', 683 pages.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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