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Fuel performance of iron-based alloy cladding using modified TRANSURANUS code
Autor
GIOVEDI, CLAUDIA
MELO, CAIO
ABE, ALFREDO Y.
SILVA, ANTONIO T.
MARTINS, MARCELO R.
INTERNATIONAL NUCLEAR ATLANTIC CONFERENCE
Resumen
The main challenge in the nuclear area since the Fukushima Daiichi accident is to develop fuel materials to be
applied in nuclear reactors aiming to increase the safety under normal operation as well as transient and accident
conditions. These efforts are concentrated in the Advanced Technology Fuel (ATF) program that has as main
scopes to study cladding materials to replace the zirconium-based alloys, and fuel materials presenting higher
thermal conductivity compared to the conventional uranium dioxide fuel pellet. In this sense, iron-based alloys,
which were used with a good performance as cladding material in the first Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR),
have becoming a good option. The assessment of the behavior of different materials previously to perform
irradiation tests, which are time consuming, can be performed using fuel performance codes, but for this, the
conventional fuel performance codes must be modified to implement the properties of the materials that are being
studied. This paper presents the results obtained using a modified version of the well-known TRANSURANUS
code, obtained from the implementation of the stainless steel 348 properties as cladding material. The simulations
were performed using data available in the open literature related to a PWR irradiation experiment. The results
obtained using the modified version of the code were compared to those obtained using the original code version
for zircaloy-4. The performance of both cladding materials was evaluated by means of the comparison of
parameters such as gap thickness, fuel centerline temperature, internal pressure, and cladding stress and strain.