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Full-Text Articles in Nuclear Engineering

Impact Of Fuel Rod Coatings On Reactor Performance And Safety, Ian Robert Stewart May 2015

Impact Of Fuel Rod Coatings On Reactor Performance And Safety, Ian Robert Stewart

Masters Theses

This study evaluates the use of a ceramic coating on the Zr-alloy cladding within a PWR using four ceramic compounds of 5 and 10 micron thicknesses: ZrO2, TiAlN, Ti2AlC, and Ti3AlC2. The film’s impact is assessed for variation on: reactivity, fuel cycle length, maximum temperature, film’s roughness, and transient conditions. The reactivity is analyzed using the following methods: change in the multiplication factor (k) each film introduces to the system using the ABH method, and Monte Carlo software (MCNP). Both methods are in good agreement, yielding less than half a percent change from a reference, no-film fuel pin. In order …


Pellet Cladding Mechanical Interactions Of Ceramic Claddings Fuels Under Light Water Reactor Conditions, Bo-Shiuan Li Jan 2013

Pellet Cladding Mechanical Interactions Of Ceramic Claddings Fuels Under Light Water Reactor Conditions, Bo-Shiuan Li

Theses and Dissertations

Ceramic materials such as silicon carbide (SiC) are promising candidate materials for nuclear fuel cladding and are of interest as part of a potential accident tolerant fuel design due to its high temperature strength, dimensional stability under irradiation, corrosion resistance, and lower neutron absorption cross-section. It also offers drastically lower hydrogen generation in loss of coolant accidents such as that experienced at Fukushima. With the implementation of SiC material properties to the fuel performance code, FRAPCON, performances of the SiC-clad fuel are compared with the conventional Zircaloy-clad fuel. Due to negligible creep and high stiffness, SiC-clad fuel allows gap closure …