Acceptance Test Data for BWXT Coated Particle Batches 93172B and 93173B—Defective IPyC and Pyrocarbon Anisotropy

Technical Report · Tue Aug 01 04:00:00 EDT 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1394180· OSTI ID:1394180

Hunn, John D. ^[1]; Helmreich, Grant W. ^[1]; Dyer, John A. ^[1]; Schumacher, Austin T. ^[1]; Skitt, Darren J. ^[1]

---

1. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

Coated particle batches J52O-16-93172B and J52O-16-93173B were produced by Babcock and Wilcox Technologies (BWXT) as part of the production campaign for the Advanced Gas Reactor Fuel Development and Qualification (AGR) Program’s AGR-5/6/7 irradiation test in the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) Advanced Test Reactor (ATR), but were not used in the final fuel composite. However, these batches may be used as demonstration production-scale coated particle fuel for other experiments. Each batch was coated in a 150-mm-diameter production-scale fluidized-bed chemical vapor deposition (CVD) furnace. Tristructural isotropic (TRISO) coatings were deposited on 425-μm-nominal-diameter spherical kernels from BWXT lot J52R-16-69317 containing a mixture of 15.5%-enriched uranium carbide and uranium oxide (UCO). The TRISO coatings consisted of four consecutive CVD layers: a ~50% dense carbon buffer layer with 100-μm-nominal thickness, a dense inner pyrolytic carbon (IPyC) layer with 40-μm-nominal thickness, a silicon carbide (SiC) layer with 35-μm-nominal thickness, and a dense outer pyrolytic carbon (OPyC) layer with 40-μm-nominal thickness. The TRISO-coated particle batches were sieved to upgrade the particles by removing over-sized and under-sized material, and the upgraded batches were designated by appending the letter A to the end of the batch number (e.g., 93172A). Secondary upgrading by sieving was performed on the A-designated batches to remove particles with missing or very-thin buffer layers that were identified during previous analysis of the individual batches for defective IPyC, as reported in the acceptance test data report for the AGR-5/6/7 production batches [Hunn et al. 2017b]. The additionally-upgraded batches were designated by appending the letter B to the end of the batch number (e.g., 93172B).

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1394180
• Report Number(s): ORNL/TM-2017/39
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS
21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS