Applicability of modified burst test data to reactivity initiated accident

A comprehensive irradiated cladding mechanical property dataset was generated by a recently developed modified burst test (MBT) under reactivity initiated accident (RIA) loading conditions [1,2]. The test data contains a wide range of test conditions that could bridge the gap between fast transient test reactor data (short pulse and/or low temperature) and prototypical commercial reactor conditions. This paper documents an evaluation performed to demonstrate the applicability of the MBT data to fuel cladding performance under RIA conditions. The current effort includes a comparison of calculated fuel cladding failure/burst strain for tests conducted at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency's (JAEA) Nuclear Safety Research Reactor (NSRR) to the MBT dataset, and an evaluation of potential mechanisms on how some NSRR tests survived beyond the cladding loading capacity. A simple shell model, coupled with temperature output from the Falcon fuel performance code, was used to calculate the fuel pellet thermal expansion of NSRR tests at the point of failure. The calculated fuel pellet thermal expansion correlates well directly with the MBT data at similar loading conditions. A 3-dimensional (3D) finite element analysis (FEA) model was used to evaluate fuel movement potential during a RIA. The evaluation indicates fuel relocation into the pellet chamfer and later into the dish is possible once a temperature threshold is reached before cladding failure and thus could significantly increase the fuel rod energy absorption capacity in a RIA event.