Stress Analysis of Coated Particle Fuel in the Deep-Burn Pebble Bed Reactor Design
High fuel temperatures and resulting fuel particle coating stresses can be expected in a Pu and minor actinide fueled Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (400 MWth) design as compared to the ’standard’ UO2 fueled core. The high discharge burnup aimed for in this Deep-Burn design results in increased power and temperature peaking in the pebble bed near the inner and outer reflector. Furthermore, the pebble power in a multi-pass in-core pebble recycling scheme is relatively high for pebbles that make their first core pass. This might result in an increase of the mechanical failure of the coatings, which serve as the containment of radioactive fission products in the PBMR design. To investigate the integrity of the particle fuel coatings as a function of the irradiation time (i.e. burnup), core position and during a Loss Of Forced Cooling (LOFC) incident the PArticle STress Analysis code (PASTA) has been coupled to the PEBBED code for neutronics, thermal-hydraulics and depletion analysis of the core. Two deep burn fuel types (Pu with or without initial MA fuel content) have been investigated with the new code system for normal and transient conditions including the effect of the statistical variation of thickness of the coating layers.
- Research Organization:
- Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- DOE - NE
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC07-05ID14517
- OSTI ID:
- 980796
- Report Number(s):
- INL/CON-09-17162; TRN: US1003804
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: PHYSOR 2010 -- Advances in Reactor Physics to Power the Nuclear Renaissance,LaGrange Park, Illinois,05/09/2010,05/14/2010
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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