Hydrides reorientation investigation of high burn-up PWR fuel cladding

The direction of formation of hydride in fuel cladding tube is a major issue for the assessment of the cladding remaining ductility after service. This behavior is quite well known for fresh material, but few results exist for irradiated material. The reorientation behavior of a Zircaloy-4 fuel cladding (AREVA duplex DX-D4) at a burn-up of around 72 GWd t−1 is investigated here. The increase of the fraction of reoriented hydrides through repeated thermo-mechanical loading is inspected; as well, the possibility to recover a state with a minimized quantity of reoriented hydrides is tested using pure thermal loading cycles. The study is completed by a qualitative assessment of the hydrogen density in the duplex layer, where a dependence of the hydrides density on the hoop stress state is observed.