Abstract
Total gas content and its composition are important specifications for sintered nuclear fuel pellets particularly in the case of fast breeder reactor fuels. Most commonly, total gas content and its composition is determined by hot vacuum extraction-quadrupole mass spectrometry (HVE-QMS). A number of parameters in this methodology such as temperature, duration of heating for quantitative extraction of evolved gases, total volume of the system, gas analysis conditions etc. need to be optimized for reliable measurements. In addition, sensitivity factors for various gases like H2, CH4, N2, CO, O2 and CO2 in quadrupole mass spectrometry required for quantification of results have been determined and validated employing reference gas mixtures of known composition. Employing these optimized conditions total gas content and its composition in blanket pellets (uranium oxide pellets) of Indian prototype fast breeder reactor was determined employing HVE-QMS. The relative expanded uncertainty (at a coverage factor k = 2) in the measurement of total gas content excluding hydrogen was estimated as per ISO guidelines and it was found to be 9.2 %.
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