About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
MS&T25: Materials Science & Technology
|
| Symposium
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Emergent Materials Under Extremes and Decisive In Situ Characterizations
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| Presentation Title |
Deployment and Testing of a Fiber-based Instrument for In-reactor Thermal Property Measurements at MIT Research Reactor |
| Author(s) |
Zilong Hua, Alex Pomo, Colby Jensen, Austin Fleming, Weiyue Zhou, Michael Short, David Carpenter, Caleb Picklesimer, Robert Schley, David Hurley |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Zilong Hua |
| Abstract Scope |
The thermal conductivity of nuclear fuels is one of the critical physical properties directly related to reactor efficiency and safety. During the reactor operation, all sorts of microstructure defects will be generated by neutron irradiation, which significantly reduce the thermal conductivity of fuels. Currently, experimental efforts to investigate such thermal conductivity degradation are primarily through post-irradiation-examination (PIE). It has been speculated that point defects may anneal prior to PIE, making the ex-situ measured properties different from the ones measured in-situ. In order to fill this knowledge gap, we developed a photothermal radiometry-based instrument to measure thermal transport property of nuclear fuels in reactor. Here we present the latest testing results of this instrument at MIT research reactor with the real-time collected thermal property data. It is expected that, with proper modifications on the instrument design, this work will enable in-reactor thermal conductivity in other testing reactors. |