Quarterly progress report on fission product behavior in LWRs for the period January--March 1978. [Fuel rods defected in a steam atmosphere]

Technical Report · Sat Apr 01 04:00:00 EST 1978

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/6741573· OSTI ID:6741573

Malinauskas, A P; Lorenz, R A; Collins, J L; Osborne, M F; Whatley, S K; Towns, R L

Models for cesium and iodine release from light-water reactor (LWR) fuel rods defected in a steam atmosphere have been formulated using the experimental release data obtained in this program. Two additional tests in the High Burnup Fuel Test Series were completed. The High Burnup Fuel Test 11 (HBU-11) utilized an irradiated fuel rod segment which was ruptured previously at 900/sup 0/C in test HBU-7. (Test HBU-7 was performed to measure burst release of these same fission products which occurs during rod rupture.) Approximately 0.031% of the total cesium inventory in the rod was released by diffusion into steam at 1200/sup 0/C over a 27-min period, whereas 0.048% of the iodine inventory and 0.043% of the total antimony content of the rod segment were released under the same conditions. When these quantities are added to the amounts released upon rupture, as determined during test HBU-7, the resultant values agree well with corresponding results obtained from test HBU-10, in which a fuel rod had been ruptured at 900/sup 0/C in steam and the temperature immediately raised to 1200/sup 0/C and maintained for a 10-min period. The agreement lends credence to an assumption made in the release models concerning the additivity of burst and diffusional release. The second test, HBU-12, was an attempt to determine the total amounts of fission products which can be readily released from a defected fuel rod over the temperature range 700-1200/sup 0/C. A preliminary evaluation of the cesium data indicates that about 0.45% of the total inventory was released in the test. The Fission Product Review Group recommended that the conceptual design of the proposed Fission Product Transport Test Facility be redesigned to provide verification of computational models for fission product release during meltdown accidents.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab., TN (USA)
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-26
• OSTI ID: 6741573
• Report Number(s): ORNL/NUREG/TM-208; NUREG/CR-0116
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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