Progress of GE development of accident tolerant fuel FeCrAl cladding

Conference · Fri Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 2016

OSTI ID:22750104

Stachowski, R. E. ^[1]; Rebak, R. B. ^[2]; Gassmann, W. P. ^[3]; Williams, J. ^[4]

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1. Global Nuclear Fuel-Americas, LLC, Wilmington, NC (United States)
2. GE Global Research, Schenectady, NY (United States)
3. Exelon Generation Company, LLC, Kennett Square, PA (United States)
4. Southern Nuclear Operating Company, Birmingham, AL (United States)

The Accident Tolerant Fuel (ATF) concept proposed by General Electric (GE) utilizes a FeCrAl alloy and current uranium dioxide (UO{sub 2}) fuel pellets, resulting in a fuel assembly that leverages the performance of existing LWR fuel assembly designs and infrastructure with improved accident tolerance. The focus of this paper is to report on the maturity of the concept and the overall feasibility on the use of ferritic FeCrAl alloys as cladding for nuclear fuel in commercial light water reactors. The following aspects are reviewed: mechanical properties, corrosion performance, stress corrosion cracking, fabrication assessments and performance evaluation. The results show that FeCrAl alloy clad fuel rods (with UO{sub 2} fuel) have reasonably demonstrated capabilities to meet or exceed current fuel design technical requirements while providing increased safety benefit during design basis events and severe accident conditions. Initial characterization of the materials, in particular APMT (the current leading FeCrAl alloy candidate whose composition is Fe + 22Cr + 5Al + 3Mo) indicates excellent operational and accident condition performance in both PWR and BWR environments. Challenges on the neutron economy and tritium release have a reasonable path to mitigation. The fabrication processes for the FeCrAl/UO{sub 2} system appears to be very similar to current LWR fuel fabrication processes (pilgering/extruding, heat treatments, welding, NDE techniques, etc.) which are mature and well understood. No issues are anticipated complying with current nuclear industry quality and performance standards.

• Research Organization: American Nuclear Society - ANS, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
• OSTI ID: 22750104
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS
21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
ACCIDENT-TOLERANT NUCLEAR FUELS
BWR TYPE REACTORS
CLADDING
CRACKING
FERRITIC STEELS
FUEL ASSEMBLIES
FUEL PELLETS
FUEL RODS
HEAT TREATMENTS
MECHANICAL PROPERTIES
NEUTRON FLUX
PWR TYPE REACTORS
REACTOR SAFETY
SEVERE ACCIDENTS
STRESS CORROSION
TRITIUM
URANIUM DIOXIDE
WELDING