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Light water reactor fuel performance modeling and multi-dimensional simulation

  • Advanced Fuel Performance: Modeling and Simulation
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Abstract

Light water reactor fuel is a multicomponent system required to produce thermal energy through the fission process, efficiently transfer the thermal energy to the coolant system, and provide a barrier to fission product release by maintaining structural integrity. The operating conditions within a reactor induce complex multi-physics phenomena that occur over time scales ranging from less than a microsecond to years and act over distances ranging from inter-atomic spacing to meters. These conditions impose challenging and unique modeling, simulation, and verification data requirements in order to accurately determine the state of the fuel during its lifetime in the reactor. The capabilities and limitations of the current engineering-scale one-dimensional and two-dimensional fuel performance codes is discussed and the challenges of employing higher level fidelity atomistic modeling techniques such as molecular dynamics and phase-field simulations is presented.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ANATECH Corp., 5435 Oberlin Drive, San Diego, CA, 92121, USA

    Joseph Y. R. Rashid

  2. Electric Power Research Institute, 3412 Hillview Ave., Palo Alto, CA, 94304, USA

    Suresh K. Yagnik

  3. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, P.O. Box 999, Richland, WA, 99352, USA

    Robert O. Montgomery

Authors
  1. Joseph Y. R. Rashid
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  2. Suresh K. Yagnik
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  3. Robert O. Montgomery
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Joseph Y. R. Rashid.

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Rashid, J.Y.R., Yagnik, S.K. & Montgomery, R.O. Light water reactor fuel performance modeling and multi-dimensional simulation. JOM 63, 81–88 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11837-011-0144-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11837-011-0144-9

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