Core severe accidents with cermet fuels – a specific study for pressurized water reactors

Cermet fuels, as a result of the specificity of composites whose components have highly varied thermal-mechanical properties, present very different types of behaviour with respect to transients and accident conditions. In the first part of this paper, an analysis is made of the prospective behaviour of such a composite under accident conditions. The second part focuses on the determination of orienting parameters that could effect a possible return to the criticality of the corium.