Fuel performance optimization of U3Si2-SiC design during normal, power ramp and RIA conditions

Abstract Benefited from its higher mechanical strength and much-improved oxidation resistance at very high temperatures (>1200 °C), SiC cladding is one of the promising accident tolerant fuel (ATF) concepts. Considering the thermal conductivity degradation of SiC cladding after irradiation and its negligible creep rate, adopting conventional UO2 with SiC cladding can lead to aggravated fission gas release and elevated fuel centerline temperatures. In this work, U3Si2 fuel with its high thermal conductivity is considered in place of UO2, when adopting SiC cladding. First, the preliminary full core simulation for U3Si2-SiC was conducted to show its holistic fuel performance compared to the current UO2-Zircaloy fuel. Then the most limiting fuel rod was selected based on the calculated chemically vapor deposited (CVD) SiC failure risk from the full core simulation. For the limiting rod, fuel-clad gap optimization was conducted to minimize CVD SiC failure risk. Subsequently, power ramp history was appended to the normal power history and full core simulation analysis for updated U3Si2-SiC design was re-performed to ensure the effectiveness of the chosen gap width. For the limiting rod, reactivity-initiated accident (RIA) analysis at hot zero power (HZP) was analyzed to evaluate its performance and infer its potential failure modes. The results from normal operation and power ramp simulations implied that CVD SiC failure risk was mainly induced by the strong pellet-cladding mechanical interaction (PCMI) and the failure probability of CVD SiC can be effectively minimized to 2.0 × 10 - 7 through enlarging the fuel-clad as-fabricated gap width. The leading failure mode for U3Si2-SiC fuel system during RIA changed from fuel melting to Ceramic Matrix Composite (CMC) failure with increasing burnup.