About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
MS&T25: Materials Science & Technology
|
| Symposium
|
Metallic Nuclear Fuel Design, Fabrication and Characterization
|
| Presentation Title |
Multi-scale modeling of wastage layer formation in metallic fuel cladding |
| Author(s) |
Larry Aagesen, Jacob Hirschhorn, Chao Jiang, Geoffrey Beausoleil |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Larry Aagesen |
| Abstract Scope |
Fuel-cladding chemical interaction (FCCI) is a major concern for U-Zr metallic fuels' performance, primarily due to the formation of a brittle layer (wastage) in the cladding. This brittle layer, resulting from intermetallic compounds between cladding constituents Fe, Cr, and lanthanide fission products, significantly impacts the cladding's mechanical integrity. Recent efforts focus on developing a mechanistic modeling framework to understand lanthanide production, transport to the fuel-cladding interface, and phase transformation to intermetallic phases. A multi-scale computational approach has been used to calculate lanthanide transport rates, with atomistic calculations determining Nd diffusivities through the solid fuel matrix and along pore surfaces. These diffusivities inform a mesoscale model to determine an effective diffusion coefficient, accounting for porosity and infiltration with bond sodium. This effective diffusivity is used in engineering-scale simulations via the BISON fuel performance code, which has been validated against EBR-II and FFTF reactor experiments. |