Reactivity initiated accident assessment for ATF cladding materials

Abstract

Following the experience that came from the Fukushima Daiichi accident, one possible way of reducing risk in a nuclear power plant operation would be the replacement of the existing fuel rod cladding material (based on zirconium alloys) by another materials which could fulfill the requirements of the accident tolerant fuel (ATF) concept. In this sense, ATF should be able to keep the current fuel system performance under normal operation conditions; moreover, it should present superior performance than the existing conventional fuel system (zirconium-based alloys and uranium dioxide) under accident conditions. The most challenging and bounding accident scenarios for nuclear fuel systems in Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR) are Loss of Coolant Accident (LOCA) and Reactivity Initiated Accident (RIA), which are postulated accidents. This work addresses the performance of ATF using iron-based alloys as cladding material under RIA conditions. The evaluation is carried out using modified versions of the coupled system FRAPCON/FRAPTRAN. These codes were modified to include the material properties (thermal, mechanical, and physics) of an iron-based alloy, specifically FeCrAl alloy. The analysis is performed using data available in the open literature related to experiments using conventional PWR fuel system (zirconium-based alloys and uranium dioxide). The results obtained using the modified code versions are compared to those of the actual existing fuel system based on zircaloy-4 cladding using the original versions of the fuel performance codes (FRAPCON/FRAPTRAN).