CABRI test events monitoring through three measurement systems

Abstract

The CABRI experimental pulse reactor, located at the Cadarache nuclear research center, southern France, is devoted to the study of Reactivity Initiated Accidents (RIA). When the thermal-hydraulic conditions representative of a pressurized water nuclear reactor are reached (mostly temperature, pressure and flowrate conditions), a fuel test rod is submitted to a power excursion, triggered by the specific 3He reactivity injection system, in order to simulate a control rod ejection accident. The experiment, managed by IRSN, aims at studying both the fuel and cladding behavior of the test rod placed into the center of the reactor during the power excursion. Several test rods pre-irradiated in pressurized nuclear power plants and with different characteristics (burn up, cladding material, fuel type, Zirconia thickness) are considered for the programs performed in the CABRI reactor. Physical phenomena occurring during the power transient are monitored by various measuring systems designed or operated by IRSN. Each system provides information linked with the different phases of the experiment. Three main measuring systems will be considered in this paper: • The test devices, a sample holder that is also implemented with almost fifty sensors used to monitor the environmental parameters in the test channel such as temperature and pressure, and to control the rod behavior during the test sequence; • The Hodoscope, an online fuel motion measurement system, which aims at analyzing the fuel motion deduced from the detection of fast neutrons emitted by the test rod, with a time step of 1ms during the transient; • The IRIS facility, conceived to perform X-ray radiography and tomography imaging before and after a power transient thanks to a linear electron accelerator, as well as quantitative gamma scanning analyses. During the experimental sequence, different events are recorded. This paper focuses on a cladding failure that occurred during the transient and that can be revealed by the three systems mentioned above. The test device instrumentation allows to determine the timing of the failure and to analyze its consequences in the vicinity of the test rod from a thermal and hydraulic point of view, while the hodoscope measures fuel elongation and relocation during the power excursion. The IRIS facility, then, helps to confirm the failure, its location and its extent. These three systems are complementary and they allow the analysis of the same event from different perspectives. Their combination will ease the interpretation of the events in the next steps for the test results analysis. The study case taken into account in this paper concerns nuclear fuel after three irradiation cycles in a commercial PWR.