Irradiation behaviour of the large grained UO{sub 2} fuel pellet in the transient conditions
- Nuclear Development Corporation, 622-12 Funaishikawa, Tokai-mura, Ibaraki 319-1111 (Japan)
- Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd., 1-1, Wadasaki-cho 1-chome, Hyogo-ku, Kobe 652-8585 (Japan)
- The Kansai Electric Power Co Inc., 8 Yokota, 13 Goichi, Mihama-cho, Mikata-gun, Fukui-ken, 919-1141 (Japan)
In order to achieve a high duty fuel rod design, it is the key issue to suppress the fission gas release from the view point of the fuel rod inner pressure design. The large grain UO{sub 2} pellet is one of the candidates to meet such a requirement by reducing the fission gas release especially at high power and/or high burnup. We have demonstrated the fuel performance of the large grain pellet in the PWR irradiation conditions, which was fabricated with no additive but with active UO{sub 2} powder through the conventional pelletizing process for the normal grain size pellet. According to the mechanism of the fission gas retention, there may be a concern about the larger gas bubble swelling of the large grain pellet at the power transient conditions which may increase the potential of the PCMI failure. In this paper, we focus on the differences of the dimensional change in comparison among the pellets with the different grain sizes at the power transient conditions. The power ramp tests were carried out on the high burnup fuel rods of normal and large grain pellet with no additive, which had been irradiated in the PWR conditions up to around 60 GWd/t at peak position. The detailed PIE results revealed that the volume increment due to the power ramp clearly showed the dependence on the grain size as well as the fission gas release and suggested that the larger grain with no additive may suppress the gas bubble swelling at the power transient conditions. According to the experimental results, it is concluded that the large grain pellet with no additive does not deteriorate the irradiation performance during the power transient conditions from the view point of the gas bubble swelling. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- American Nuclear Society, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 21229296
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 2007 LWR Fuel Performance Meeting / TopFuel 2007, San Francisco, CA (United States), 30 Sep - 3 Oct 2007; Other Information: Country of input: France; 8 refs; Related Information: In: Proceedings of the 2007 LWR Fuel Performance Meeting / TopFuel 2007 'Zero by 2010', 683 pages.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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