THERMAL PERFORMANCE SENSITIVITY STUDIES IN SUPPORT OF MATERIAL MODELING FOR EXTENDED STORAGE OF USED NUCLEAR FUEL

The work reported here is an investigation of the sensitivity of component temperatures of a storage system, including fuel cladding temperatures, in response to age-related changes that could degrade the design-basis thermal behavior of the system. Three specific areas of interest were identified for this study. • degradation of the canister backfill gas from pure helium to a mixture of air and helium, resulting from postulated leakage due to stress corrosion cracking (SCC) of canister welds • changes in surface emissivity of system components, resulting from corrosion or other aging mechanisms, which could cause potentially significant changes in temperatures and temperature distributions, due to the effect on thermal radiation exchange between components • changes in fuel and basket temperatures due to changes in fuel assembly position within the basket cells in the canister The purpose of these sensitivity studies is to provide a realistic example of how changes in the physical properties or configuration of the storage system components can affect temperatures and temperature distributions. The magnitudes of these sensitivities can provide guidance for identifying appropriate modeling assumptions for thermal evaluations extending long term storage out beyond 50, 100, 200, and 300 years