Weld Development of FeCrAl Thin-Wall Cladding for LWR Accident Tolerant Fuel

Conference · Fri Sep 01 04:00:00 EDT 2017

OSTI ID:1471570

Gan, Jian ^[1]; Jerred, Nathan D. ^[1]; Perez, Emmanuel ^[1]; Haggard, DC ^[1]; Wen, Haiming ^[1]

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1. Idaho National Laboratory

The development of new cladding materials to replace Zr-based cladding for light water reactors (LWRs) has been actively pursued with improved high-temperature oxidation resistance to significantly suppress hydrogen production from an accident such as a loss of coolant event. FeCrAl alloy with a typical composition of approximately Fe-15Cr-5Al has been selected as a candidate material because of its improved high-temperature oxidation resistance over the present LWR zircaloy cladding. As a result of higher thermal neutron absorption for FeCrAl alloy, the cladding wall thickness needs to be reduced by approximately half compared to that of Zircaloy cladding to be comparable to the current LWR fuel performance under the normal operating condition. New weld techniques for joining the endplug to thin-walled cladding need to be developed. Both laser beam weld and pressure resistance weld were employed. This paper summarizes the recent progress on the laser weld development for FeCrAl cladding with 350 µm wall thickness. The results of microstructural characterization and mechanical property testing of the weld for the cladding-endplug set are discussed.

• Research Organization: Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
• DOE Contract Number: AC07-05ID14517
• OSTI ID: 1471570
• Report Number(s): INL/CON-17-40835-Rev000
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
FeCrAl
Laser beam weld
characterization
pressure resistance weld
thin-walled cladding