Enhanced Accident-Tolerant Fuel Performance and Reliability for Aggressive iPWR/SMR Operation
- Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States)
This project will develop a process that evaluates the whole-core operational and safety performance of a reactor-and-fuel combination by integrating core-wide three-dimensional neutronics with Moose/Bison and Peregrine multi-physics fuel performance assessments using explicit time and space dependent fuel rod operational power histories generated in the whole-core analysis. Demonstration of the process will target large contemporary PWRs with traditional UO2 fuel and Zircaloy cladding to establish a baseline analysis, while the innovative application of this project will extend the developed process to evaluate operational and safety performance, via reactor physics and fuel performance analyses, of key emerging/leading concepts of enhanced Accident Tolerant Fuels (ATFs) within increasingly aggressive operational scenarios such as loadfollow maneuvers in PWRs and long-cycle rodded and unborated operation in small modular reactors (SMRs). The ATFs to be considered include standard UO2 fuel pellets cladded with advanced iron-based alloys (FeCrAl) as well as particle-based Fully Ceramic Microencapsulated (FCM) fuels with FeCrAl or Zircaloy cladding, but the process being developed and demonstrated could ultimately be applied to any candidate ATF concept in a light water reactor. In fact, given that ATF R&D priorities are in a dynamic state, the scope related to ATFs will be targeted for the second half of this three-year project so to provide some opportunity to strengthen the programmatic alignment of this project with the DOE Fuels Campaign, by identifying the most promising and relevant ATFs at that time for further evaluation, while the early part of the project will focus upon fine-tuning the process herein developed and upon generating the baseline analyses against which a larger scope of ATF concepts can be compared.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
- DOE Contract Number:
- NE0008290
- OSTI ID:
- 1470224
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/NEUP-14-6893; 14-6893; TRN: US1902596
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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