Abstract
Bridging lower length-scale calculations with the engineering-scale simulations of fuel performance codes requires the development of dedicated intermediate-scale codes. In this work, we present SCIANTIX, an open source 0D stand-alone computer code designed to be included/coupled as a module in existing fuel performance codes. The models currently available in SCIANTIX cover intra- and inter-granular inert gas behaviour in UO2, and high burnup structure formation as well. Showcases of validation in both constant and transient conditions are presented in this work. As for the numerical treatment of the model equations, SCIANTIX is developed with full numerical consistency and entirely verified with the method of manufactured solutions – verification of different numerical solvers is also showcased in this work.
Highlights
The predictive analysis of the behaviour of nuclear fuel rods under irradiation is one of the fundamental activities required for the safe design, licensing and operation of nuclear reactors [1e3]
Two different approaches are possible to describe fission gas behaviour in the frame of fuel performance codes: (1) correlationbased approaches, in which fission gas release and gaseous swelling are calculated via expressions directly related to macroscopic variables of the fuel rod and tuned on experimental data [4,14e21], and (2) physics-based approaches, which aim at describing the physical mechanisms of fission gas behaviour within the fuel1 [22e34]
As discussed in the previous Sections, in this work we presented the models currently available in the open source version of SCIANTIX, together with a summary of the validation and selected showcases of results compared with experimental data
Summary
The predictive analysis of the behaviour of nuclear fuel rods under irradiation is one of the fundamental activities required for the safe design, licensing and operation of nuclear reactors [1e3]. The SCIANTIX code [67] presented in this paper is grafted into this research framework It has been developed with a twofold objective: It aims at effectively bridging lower-length scale and engineering scale of fuel performance codes, feeding the latter with theoretical and experimental knowledge about fission gas behaviour mechanisms inferred by the former approaches. When possible, the use of physics-based models is preferred over correlation-based approaches, but always in line with the computational requirements of fuel performance codes It aims at being usable as a stand-alone code for the simulation of separate effect experiments at the fuel-grain scale involving inert gas behaviour, both supporting the design of the experiment itself and the interpretation of the results. We provide an overview of the currently ongoing developments in SCIANTIX, which are going to be released open source as the results are published (Section 5)
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