About

The work focuses on development of computational tools to simulate near term Accident Tolerant Fuel (ATF) options under Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) framework. All of ATF concepts involve some changes to the conventional fuel that is made of UO2 pellets and Zircaloy cladding. Any type of change to the current fuel system is more costly from the point of view of manufacturing and initial regulatory burden. This focus on near term ATF options is motivated by minimizing such economic penalty. The near term options considered are: Thin ceramic/MAX phase coatings, thin metallic coatings and small additives to the fuel.

The work combines strong university capabilities of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with its experience in reactor and fuel design, neutronics and thermo-mechanical performance and safety analysis, University of Wisconsin (UW) with its experience in severe accident modeling and development of cladding coatings for the US ATF industrial campaign, Texas A&M University (TAMU) with its material ion irradiation capability and experience in atomistic scale simulations and Pennsylvania State University (PSU) with its meso-scale fuel performance modeling to address the development of computational tools necessary for evaluation of ATF concepts. Since NEAMS tools are currently being developed predominantly at Idaho National Laboratory (INL), INL is a member of the research team to allow for efficient implementation and integration of models. The largest challenge of this effort is development of the capability for simulation of integral fuel performance under accident conditions. This is addressed through close collaboration of the US university partners with ANATECH Corporation, which has developed such models for conventional LWR fuel system and AREVA, which is leading one of the industrial efforts in the current ATF campaign of US DOE and one of the three nuclear fuel suppliers in the US.

ATF Cladding Model Validation and Verificatoin

Student: Malik Wagih (PhD)

In order to estimate the economical impact under normal operation and additional grace period given by the ATF concpets data-driven simulations needs to be performed. The experimental work for validation include pressure tube and four-point bend crack propogation tests. The data will drive finite element simulations developed under INL's MOOSE/BISON framework.

Publication: None

ATF Fuel Model Verificatoin and Simulation

Student: Yifeng Che (PhD)

Understanding the integral performance of fuel designed with advanced materials is the key in development of ATF concepts. Thermal and mechanical data from experiments will be implemented in the BISON framework in order to develop thermal and mechanical models in engineering scale, accounting for impact of temperature, stresses, operational corrosion and irradiation.

Publication: None

Accident Senario Validation, Verification and Simulation

Student: Anil Gurgen (PhD)

The reactor system wide performance during accident is required as boudnary condition to perform fuel performance analysis. The performance of fuel during accident may lead to different core thermal-hydraulic response (e.g. chemical reactions may occur). The focus of this work is to generate data under accident scenarios using high steam oxidation and quench facilities and model the reactor systems performance under severe accident scenarios using NRC level code, TRACE.

Publication: None