Temperature and Burnup Correlated FCCI in U-10Zr Metallic Fuel

Metallic fuels are proposed for use in advanced sodium cooled fast reactors. The experience basis for metallic fuels is extensive and includes development and qualification of fuels for the Experimental Breeder Reactor I, the Experimental Breeder Reactor II, FERMI-I, and the Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) reactors. Metallic fuels provide a number of advantages over other fuel types in terms of fabricability, performance, recyclability, and safety. Key to the performance of all nuclear fuel systems is the resistance to “breach” and subsequent release of fission products and fuel constituents to the primary coolant system of the nuclear power plant. In metallic fuel, the experience is that significant fuel-cladding chemical (FCCI) interaction occurs and becomes prevalent at high power-high temperature operation and ultimately leads to fuel pin breach and failure. Empirical relationships for metallic fuel pin failure have been developed from a large body of in-pile and out of pile research, development, and experimentation. It has been found that significant in-pile acceleration of the FCCI rate is experienced over similar condition out-of-pile experiments. The study of FCCI in metallic fuels has led to the quantification of in-pile failure rates to establish an empirical time and temperature dependent failure limit for fuel elements. Up until now the understanding of FCCI layer formation has been limited to data generated in EBR-II experiments. This dissertation provides new FCCI data extracted from the MFF-series of metallic fuel irradiations performed in the FFTF. These fuel assemblies contain valuable information on the formation of FCCI in metallic fuels at a variety of temperature and burnup conditions and in fuel with axial fuel height three times longer than EBR-II experiments. The longer fuel column in the FFTF and the fuel pins examined have significantly different flux, power, temperature, and FCCI profiles than that found in similar tests conducted in the EBR-II and study of the differences between the two fuel systems is critical for design of large advanced sodium cooled fast reactor systems. Comparing FCCI layer formation data between FFTF and EBR-II indicates that the same diffusion model can be used to represent the two systems when considering time, temperature, burnup history, and axial temperature and power profiles. This dissertation shows that FCCI formation peaks further below the top of the fuel column in FFTF experiments than has been observed in EBR-II experiments. The work provided in this dissertation will help forward the design of advanced metallic fuel systems for advanced sodium cooled fast reactors by allowing the prediction of FCCI layer formation in full length reactor designs. This will allow the accurate lifetime prediction of fuel performance capability for new advanced sodium cooled fast reactors with extended core designs