The purpose of this report is to present the most promising ATF concepts currently under development at various fuel vendors, research institutions and nuclear laboratories around the world and to provide the reader an independent assessment of the state of the art and potential for development and implementation related with each type of the ATF.
This Special Topic Report addresses the degradation mechanisms that could potentially affect the performance of spent fuel stored in a dry, inert environment for periods up to ~100 years. The focus of the review is on the spent nuclear fuel rods, and not on the storage system components such as the casks or the canisters and their internal hardware elements.
The overall objective of this Special Topic Report (STR) is to provide the knowledge of how the reactor environment (fast neutron flux, temperature, water chemistry, etc.) and the Zr-alloy microstructure, which is a function of material chemistry and manufacturing process, impacts fuel performance during normal operations, transients, design basis accidents and interim dry storage.
(ZIRAT20/IZNA15 STR)
Although the performance of water reactor fuel has improved greatly relative to early experience, social, regulatory and operational incentives exist to both maintain the gains that have been achieved and to make further improvements in fuel reliability. The primary objectives in these areas are to increase fuel reliability by
Maintaining and improving fuel reliability requires an understanding of the behaviour of fuel and materials as related to in-reactor conditions and the mechanisms that have been observed to cause fuel failures. A key factor in improving fuel reliability is the identification of the cause or causes of failure. Such information, in turn, requires the examination and analysis of irradiated fuel at reactor sites (poolside examinations), in hot cells and in related laboratories. Thus, to make progress toward ultra-high reliability fuel and to reduce the potential for post-failure degradation, it is imperative to examine both failed and non-failed (reference) fuel. The most cost efficient way to carry out these examinations is to begin with a good understanding of the known mechanisms of failure and degradation and of the principal methods for examining irradiated fuel. With such an understanding, fuel investigation and development programs can be focused on the likely causes of failure or degradation, while unnecessary costly and time consuming work can be minimized. One of the objectives of this Report is to provide such an understanding.