Burn-up determination and accident testing of HTR-PM fuel elements irradiated in the HFR Petten

Abstract

The current paper reports the results of gamma spectroscopic burn-up determination and KüFA safety testing at JRC Karlsruhe on spherical high-temperature reactor fuel elements, which were fabricated by the Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology of the Tsinghua University, Beijing. The fuel elements were irradiated in the High Flux Reactor, Petten, in the frame of the HFR-EU1 and HTR-PM campaigns and transported to JRC Karlsruhe for post-irradiation examination and accident testing in the KüFA device in the frame of a bilateral safety research study. Burn-up determination was performed on seven fuel elements based on the quantitative measurement of their Cs-137 inventories using an established gamma spectroscopy set-up in the JRC hot cell facilities. Accident testing was conducted on three HTR-PM fuel elements in several phases at simulated accident temperatures between 1620 °C and 1770 °C for 150 h to simulate hypothetical depressurization and loss-of-forced circulation accidents. The release of Kr-85 was measured during the tests in a cold trap and solid fission product release was determined by gamma spectroscopic analyses of exchangeable cold plates in a low background environment. After successful completion of the KüFA tests the fuel elements are currently undergoing further post-irradiation examinations including profile disintegration as well as ceramography and scanning electron microscopy of individual coated particles.