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Pressurized water reactor fuel crud and corrosion modeling

  • Advanced Fuel Performance: Modeling and Simulation
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Abstract

Pressurized water reactors circulate high-temperature water that slowly corrodes Inconel and stainless steel system surfaces, and the nickel/iron based corrosion products deposit in regions of the fuel where sub-cooled nucleate boiling occurs. The deposited corrosion products, called ‘crud’, can have an adverse impact on fuel performance. Boron can concentrate within the crud in the boiling regions of the fuel leading to a phenomenon known as axial offset anomaly (AOA). In rare cases, fuel clad integrity can be compromised because of crud-induced localized corrosion (CILC) of the zirconium-based alloy. Westinghouse and the Electric Power Research Institute have committed to understanding the crud transport process and develop a risk assessment software tool called boron-induced offset anomaly (BOA) to avoid AOA and CILC. This paper reviews the history of the BOA model development and new efforts to develop a micro-scale model called MAMBA for use in the Consortium for Advanced Light Water Reactor Simulation (CASL) program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Electric Power Research Institute, Palo Alto, CA, USA

    Jeff Deshon & Dennis Hussey

  2. Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA

    Brian Kendrick

  3. National Nuclear Laboratory, Didcot, Oxfordshire, UK

    John McGurk

  4. Westinghouse Electric Company, Cranberry Township, PA, USA

    Jeff Secker

  5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Michael Short

Authors
  1. Jeff Deshon
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  2. Dennis Hussey
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  3. Brian Kendrick
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  4. John McGurk
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  5. Jeff Secker
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  6. Michael Short
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Correspondence to Dennis Hussey.

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Deshon, J., Hussey, D., Kendrick, B. et al. Pressurized water reactor fuel crud and corrosion modeling. JOM 63, 64–72 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11837-011-0141-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11837-011-0141-z

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