Fission product release and microstructure changes during laboratory annealing of a very high burn-up fuel specimen

A commercial PWR fuel sample with a local burn-up of about 240 MWd/kgHM was annealed in a Knudsen cell mass spectrometer system with a heating rate of 10 K/min up to 2750 K at which temperature the sample was completely vaporized. The release of fission gases and fission products was studied as a function of temperature. In one of the runs the heating was interrupted successively at 900, 1500 and 1860 K and at each step a small fragment of the sample was examined by SEM and analysed by energy dispersive electron probe microanalysis. The release behaviour of volatile, gaseous and other less volatile fission products is presented and analysed with the EFFUS program and related to the structural changes of the fuel.