Fission product release modelling for application of fuel-failure monitoring and detection - An overview

A review of fission product release theory is presented in support of fuel-failure monitoring analysis for the characterization and location of defective fuel. This work is used to describe: (i) the development of the steady-state Visual_DETECT code for coolant activity analysis to characterize failures in the core and the amount of tramp uranium; (ii) a generalization of this model in the STAR code for prediction of the time-dependent release of iodine and noble gas fission products to the coolant during reactor start-up, steady-state, shutdown, and bundle-shifting manoeuvres; (iii) an extension of the model to account for the release of fission products that are delayed-neutron precursors for assessment of fuel-failure location; and (iv) a simplification of the steady-state model to assess the methodology proposed by WANO for a fuel reliability indicator for water-cooled reactors.