CHARACTERISTICS AND PERFORMANCE OF ZIRLO CLADDING USED FUEL

摘要

As part of the “North Anna Sister Rods”program, some high burnup (HBU) ZIRLO® clad fuelrods were shipped to Oak Ridge National Laboratory(ORNL). The Sister Rods project is supporting USDepartment of Energy (DOE)’s “High Burnup Spent FuelData Project”, focusing on “understanding the effects oflong-term storage and transportation on high burnup(HBU) (>45 GWD/MTU) light water reactor fuel”. TheZIRLO rods from the Sister Rods program arerepresentative of a majority of Westinghouse’s used fuelwith ZIRLO cladding with rod-average burnup rangingfrom 48 to 59 GWd/MTU and a standard 9.5 mm (0.374inches) rod diameter in a 17×17 array.Some performance characteristics of the entire ZIRLOsister rods are being obtained at ORNL, including visual,axial growth and in-reactor corrosion. The rod internalpressure and fission gas release were obtained from bothORNL and PNNL (Pacific Northwest NationalLaboratory). The characteristics and performance ofZIRLO sister rods are being evaluated for transportationand interim/long term storage. The evaluation includescomparing the measurement data with historicaldatabases as well as model predictions.This paper will report the evaluations of thecharacteristics and performance of ZIRLO sister rods fortransportation and storage.