Application of Thermochemical Modeling to Assessment/Evaluation of Nuclear Fuel Behavior

Conference · Fri Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.calphad.2016.04.004· OSTI ID:1271871

Besmann, Theodore M ^[1]; McMurray, Jake W ^[2]; Simunovic, Srdjan ^[2]

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1. University of South Carolina, Columbia
2. ORNL

The combination of new fuel compositions and higher burn-ups envisioned for the future means that representing fuel properties will be much more important, and yet more complex. Behavior within the oxide fuel rods will be difficult to model owing to the high temperatures, and the large number of elements generated and their significant concentrations that are a result of fuels taken to high burn-up. This unprecedented complexity offers an enormous challenge to the thermochemical understanding of these systems and opportunities to advance solid solution models to describe these materials. This paper attempts to model and simulate that behavior using an oxide fuels thermochemical description to compute the equilibrium phase state and oxygen potential of LWR fuel under irradiation.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). High Temperature Materials Lab. (HTML)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1271871
• Resource Relation: Journal Volume: 55; Conference: TMS, Nashville, TN, USA, 20160214, 20160218
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English