In-Pile Thermal Conductivity Measurement Method for Nuclear Fuels

Conference · Sat Aug 01 04:00:00 EDT 2009

OSTI ID:968571

Rempe, Joy L; Fox, Brandon; Ban, Heng; Daw, Joshua E; Knudson, Darrell L; Condie, Keith G

Thermophysical properties of advanced nuclear fuels and materials during irradiation must be known prior to their use in existing, advanced, or next generation reactors. Thermal conductivity is one of the most important properties for predicting fuel and material performance. A joint Utah State University (USU) / Idaho National Laboratory (INL) project, which is being conducted with assistance from the Institute for Energy Technology at the Norway Halden Reactor Project, is investigating in-pile fuel thermal conductivity measurement methods. This paper focuses on one of these methods – a multiple thermocouple method. This two-thermocouple method uses a surrogate fuel rod with Joule heating to simulate volumetric heat generation to gain insights about in-pile detection of thermal conductivity. Preliminary results indicated that this method can measure thermal conductivity over a specific temperature range. This paper reports the thermal conductivity values obtained by this technique and compares these values with thermal property data obtained from standard thermal property measurement techniques available at INL’s High Test Temperature Laboratory. Experimental results and material properties data are also compared to finite element analysis results.

• Research Organization: Idaho National Laboratory (INL)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC07-05ID14517
• OSTI ID: 968571
• Report Number(s): INL/CON-09-16451
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
DETECTION
FUEL RODS
IRRADIATION
In-pile instrumentation
JOULE HEATING
NUCLEAR FUELS
PERFORMANCE
THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY
THERMAL EXPANSION
THERMOCOUPLES
thermal conductivity measurement of nuclear fuels