Fuel rod behavior under normal operating conditions in Super Fast Reactor with high power density

Abstract

A Super Fast Reactor is a pressure-vessel type, fast spectrum SuperCritical Water Reactor (SCWR) which is presently researched in a Japanese project. A preliminary core has an average power density of 158.8W/cc. However one of the most important advantages of the Super Fast Reactor is the higher power density compared to the thermal spectrum SCWR, which reduces the capital cost. After the sensitivity analyses on the fuel rod configurations, the fuel assembly configurations and the core configurations, an improved core with an average power density of 294.8W/cc is designed by 3-D neutronic/thermal-hydraulic coupled calculations. In order to ensure the fuel rod integrity of new core design with high power density, the fuel rod behaviors under normal operating condition are analyzed using fuel performance code FEMAXI-6. The power histories of each fuel rod are taken from the neutronics calculation results in the core design. The cladding surface temperature histories are generated from the thermal-hydraulic calculation results in the core design. Four types of the limiting fuel rods, individually with the Maximum Cladding Surface Temperature (MCST), Maximum Power Peak (MPP), Maximum Discharge Burnup (MDB) and Different Coolant Flow Pattern (DCFP), are chosen to cover all the fuel rods in the core. The available design range of the fuel rod design parameters, such as initial gas plenum pressure, gas plenum position, gas plenum length, grain size and gap size, are found out in order to satisfy the following design criteria: (1) Maximum fuel centerline temperature should be less than 1900°C. (2) Maximum cladding stress in circumferential direction should be less than 100MPa. (3) Pressure difference on the cladding should be less than 1/3 of buckling collapse pressure. (4) Cumulative damage faction (CDF) of the cladding should be less than 1.0. Unfortunately some criteria could not be satisfied, such as the maximum fuel centerline temperature and maximum cladding stress. Therefore the influence of average linear heat generation rate, Pu enrichment and compressive stress to yield strength ratio are analyzed. Finally the improved fuel rod design of the new core is proposed.