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Cladding failure margins for metallic fuel in the integral fast reactor

Conference ·
OSTI ID:6303435
The reference fuel for Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) is a ternary U-Pu-Zr alloy with a low swelling austenitic or ferritic stainless steel cladding. It is known that low melting point eutectics may form in such metallic fuel-cladding systems which could contribute to cladding failure under accident conditions. This paper will present recent measurements of cladding eutectic penetration rates for the ternary IFR alloy and will compare these results with earlier eutectic penetration data for other fuel and cladding materials. A method for calculating failure of metallic fuel pins is developed by combining cladding deformation equations with a large strain analysis where the hoop stress is calculated using the instantaneous wall thickness as determined from correlations of the eutectic penetration-rate data. This method is applied to analyze the results of in-reactor and out-of-reactor fuel pin failure tests on uranium-fissium alloy EBR-II Mark-II driver fuel.
Research Organization:
Argonne National Lab., IL (USA)
DOE Contract Number:
W-31109-ENG-38
OSTI ID:
6303435
Report Number(s):
CONF-870812-22; ON: DE87011460
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English