| About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
MS&T23: Materials Science & Technology
|
| Symposium
|
Advanced Characterization of Materials for Nuclear, Radiation, and Extreme Environments IV
|
| Presentation Title |
Assessing the Ability of Nuclear Fuel Performance Codes to Predict Radially Resolved Properties in Oxide Fuels |
| Author(s) |
Marat Khafizov, Joshua Ferrigno, Aysenur Toptan, Fabiola Cappia, Tsvetoslav Pavlov |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Marat Khafizov |
| Abstract Scope |
Current engineering level fuel performance codes primarily rely on physical property correlations parametrized with respect to burnup and temperature. There is a need for mechanistic models that account for changes in physical properties considering microstructure evolution under nuclear reactor irradiation conditions. We discuss how radially resolved microstructure and properties obtained from post irradiation examination (PIE) of irradiated oxide fuels is used to assess the adequacy of engineering scale BISON fuel performance code as well as selected stand-alone single effect models. Specifically, we apply mechanistic models for atomic redistribution, porosity evolution, and thermal conductivity to analyze microstructure revealed using various electron microscopy-based methods and thermal conductivity microscope. A reasonable agreement between models and PIE are achieved in several radial regions, while models need further improvements in other regions. This study demonstrates the potential of radially resolved characterization to capture microstructure evolution across various irradiations regimes from a single fuel pin. |