Abstract
After the March 2011 Fukushima events, the U.S. Congress directed the Department of Energy (DOE) to focus efforts on the development of fuel cladding materials with enhanced accident tolerance. In comparison with the stand-ard UO2–Zirconium based system, the new fuels need to tolerate loss of active cooling in the core for a considerably longer time period while maintaining or improving the fuel performance during normal operation conditions. Advanced steels such as iron-chromium-aluminum (FeCrAl) alloys are being investigated for degradation behavior both under normal operation conditions in high temperature water (e.g. 288°C) and under accident conditions for reaction with steam up to 1400°C. Commercial and experimental alloys were tested for several periods of time in 100% superheated steam from 800°C to 1475°C. Results show that FeCrAl alloys significantly outperform the resistance in steam of the current zirconium alloys.
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Rebak, R.B. (2014). Advanced Steels for Accident Tolerant Fuel Cladding in Current Light Water Reactors. In: Energy Materials 2014. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48765-6_51
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48765-6_51
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
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