Neutron Radiography and Tomography Investigations of the Secondary Hydriding of Zircaloy-4 during Simulated Loss of Coolant Nuclear Accidents

In the framework of the post-test examinations of the large-scale LOCA simulation tests at the fuel rod bundle scale, the hydrogen distributions in specimens prepared from the QUENCH-L0 and -L1 tests were studied by means of neutron radiography and tomography. In order to determine quantitative hydrogen concentrations, both, neutron radiography and tomography were calibrated using cladding tube segments with known hydrogen concentrations. The linear dependence of the total macroscopic neutron cross section with the H/Zr atomic ratio was determined for both methods.The hydrogen distributions in samples prepared from the two tests differ significantly as a first glance to the results obtained for the QUENCH-L1 shows. Whereas clearly visible hydrogen bands were found in samples of the QUENCH-L0 test with a time between burst and quenching of more than 70 s; in some specimens prepared from the QUENCH-L1 test only blurred bands could be detected. The reasons for these different behaviors can be the different times between reaching the temperature maxima and the quenching, as well as bending of the QUENCH-L1 bundle. In the QUENCH-L0 test the bundle was quenched immediately after reaching the maximal temperature. In QUENCH-L1 the hydrogen had about 130 s to diffuse and reach more homogeneous distributions without clear contrasts between the hydrogen bands and the neighboring regions in the neutron images.