Radial Distributions of Power and Isotopic Concentrations in Candidate Accident Tolerant Fuel U3Si2 and UO2/U3Si2 Fuel Pins with FeCrAl Cladding

TL;DR

This paper introduces an analytical formula to describe radial distributions of power and isotopic concentrations in various fuel-cladding combinations, including accident tolerant fuels, aiding in thermal and neutronic analyses.

Contribution

An analytical function f(x,s) is proposed to accurately model radial properties across different fuel types and burnup levels, facilitating multi-physics studies.

Findings

The formula fits simulation data with small deviations.

Radial power distributions are similar across fuel types, but temperature distributions differ.

The model enables quick estimation of radial properties at any burnup or radius.

Abstract

Monte Carlo simulations show similarity on radial distributions of power and isotopic concentrations at any effective full power depletion time among five kinds of fuel-cladding combinations with the same cycle length, including the normal UO2-zircaloy combination, the candidate Accident Tolerant Fuel (ATF) UO2/U3Si2-FeCrAl combination, and three kinds of candidate ATF U3Si2-FeCrAl combinations. An analytical formula f(x,s) including the fuel exposure (s) and the relative radial (x) is proposed to describe the radial properties for all five kinds of fuel-cladding combinations. f(x,s) has the form of the second order polynomial term of s with the exponential type of coefficients depending on x. It is shown that the suggested function f(x,s) gives a nice description on the simulation data with rather small deviations and can immediately provide radial distribution of power, burnup, and isotopic concentrations of 235U, 238U, 239Pu, and 241Pu at any fuel exposure and relative radius. It is useful to discuss the fuel temperature through the present analytical formula. The realistic radial power distribution gives flatter radial temperature distribution compared with the uniform power distribution. Because of the different thermal conductivities of fuels and claddings and the different thicknesses of claddings, the present discussed five kinds of fuel-cladding combinations have different radial temperature distributions, although their radial power distributions are quite similar. The present work provides an analytical formula to describe the radial properties of the ATF which is expected to be helpful for further neutronic and multi-physics coupling studies.