Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Breached pin performance in the EBR-II RBCB program

Conference ·
OSTI ID:6839383
The results of five recent RBCB tests show that fuel-sodium reaction does not greatly degrade the performance of (UPu)O/sub 2/ pins: cladding breaches tend to stabilize and not lose fuel, while reaction product at the surface only mildly increases fuel temperatures. A bundle of 19 high-burnup pins with three failures was operated successfully for 97 days and low-burnup pins with simulated defective upper welds were operated for 152 days without difficulty. Several midlife failures were tested for shorter time to study fuel-sodium reaction. Testing continues in order to characterize the long-term RBCB behavior of midlife failures.
Research Organization:
Argonne National Lab., IL (USA); Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corp., Tokyo (Japan)
DOE Contract Number:
W-31109-ENG-38
OSTI ID:
6839383
Report Number(s):
CONF-860931-7; ON: DE87004487
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English