Artigo de peri??dico
Evaluation of corrosion on the fuel performance of stainless steel cladding
Registro en:
2491-9292
40
2
10.1051/epjn/2016033
Autor
GOMES, DANIEL de S.
ABE, ALFREDO
SILVA, ANTONIO T. e
GIOVEDI, CLAUDIA
MARTINS, MARCELO R.
Resumen
In nuclear reactors, the use of stainless steel (SS) as the cladding material offers some advantages
such as good mechanical and corrosion resistance. However, its main advantage is the reduction in the amount of
the hydrogen released during loss-of-coolant accident, as observed in the Fukushima Daiichi accident. Hence,
research aimed at developing accident tolerant fuels should consider SS as an important alternative to existing
materials. However, the available computational tools used to analyze fuel rod performance under irradiation
are not capable of assessing the effectiveness of SS as the cladding material. This paper addresses the SS
corrosion behavior in a modified fuel performance code in order to evaluate its effect on the global fuel
performance. Then, data from the literature concerning to SS corrosion are implemented in the specific code
subroutines, and the results obtained are compared to those for Zircaloy-4 (Zy-4) under the same power history.
The results show that the effects of corrosion on SS are considerably different from those on Zy-4. The thickness
of the oxide layer formed on the SS surface is considerably lower than that formed on Zy-4. As a consequence of
this, the global fuel performance of SS under irradiation should be less affected by the corrosion.