High temperature post-irradiation performance of spent pressurized-water-reactor fuel rods under dry-storage conditions

Post-irradiation studies on failure mechanisms of well characterized PWR rods were conducted for up to a year at 482, 510 and 571/sup 0/C in unlimited air and inert gas atmospheres. No cladding breaches occurred even though the tests operated many orders of magnitude longer in time than the lifetime predicted by Blackburn's analyses. The extended lifetime is due to significant creep strain of the Zircaloy cladding which decreases the internal rod pressures. The cladding creep also contributes to radial cracks, through the external oxide and internal FCCI layers, which propagated into and arrested in an oxygen stabilized ..cap alpha..-Zircaloy layer. There were no signs of either additional cladding hydriding, stress-corrosion cracking or fuel pellet degradation. Using the Larson-Miller formulization, a conservative maximum storage temperature of 400/sup 0/C is recommended to ensure a 1000-year cladding lifetime. This accounts for crack propagation and assumes annealing of the irradiation-hardened cladding