FY14 Status Report: CIRFT Testing Results on High Burnup UNF
- ORNL
The objective of this project is to perform a systematic study of SNF/UNF (spent nuclear fuel/or used nuclear fuel) integrity under simulated transportation environments by using hot cell testing technology developed recently at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), CIRFT (Cyclic Integrated Reversible-Bending Fatigue Tester). Under Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) sponsorship, ORNL completed four benchmarking tests, four static tests, and twelve dynamic or cycle tests on H. B. Robinson (HBR) high burn-up (HBU) fuel. With support from the US Department of Energy and the NRC, CIRFT testing has been continued. The CIRFT testing was conducted on three HBR rods (R3, R4, and R5), with two specimens failed and one specimen un-failed. The total number of cycles in the test of un-failed specimens went over 2.23 107; the test was stopped as because the specimen did not show any sign of failure. The data analysis on all the HBR SNF rods demonstrated that it is necessary to characterize the fatigue life of used fuel rods in terms of both the curvature amplitude and the maximum of absolute of curvature extremes. The latter is significant because the maxima of extremes signify the maximum of tensile stress of the outer fiber of the bending rod. So far, a large variety of hydrogen contents has been covered in the CIRFT testing on HBR rods. It has been shown that the load amplitude is the dominant factor that controls the lifetime of bending rods, but the hydrogen content also has an important effect on the lifetime attained, according to the load range tested.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). High Temperature Materials Lab. (HTML)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC05-00OR22725
- OSTI ID:
- 1154854
- Report Number(s):
- ORNL/LTR-2014/310; AF5865010; NEAF346
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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