Non-destructive Preirradiation Assessment of UN / U-Si ???LANL1??? ATF formulation

Vogel, Sven C.¹  Losko, Adrian Simon¹  Pokharel, Reeju¹  Ickes, Timothy Lee¹  Hunter, James F.¹  Brown, Donald William¹  Voit, Stewart Lancaster¹  Tremsin, Anton S.¹  Bourke, Mark Andrew¹  McClellan, Kenneth James¹ 

[1] Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

关键词: accident tolerant fuel;    nuclear;    neutron;    characterization;   

DOI  :  10.2172/1325689
RP-ID  :  LA-UR--16-27110
PID  :  OSTI ID: 1325689

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来源: SciTech Connect

【 摘 要 】

The goal of the Advanced Non-destructive Fuel Examination (ANDE) work package is the development and application of non-destructive neutron imaging and scattering techniques to ceramic and metallic nuclear fuels, ultimately also to irradiated fuels. The results of these characterizations provide complete pre- and post-irradiation on length scales ranging from mm to nm, guide destructive examination, and inform modelling efforts. Besides technique development and application to samples to be irradiated, the ANDE work package also examines possible technologies to provide these characterization techniques pool-side, e.g. at the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) using laser-driven intense pulsed neutron and gamma sources. Neutron tomography and neutron diffraction characterizations were performed on nine pellets; four UN/ U-Si composite formulations (two enrichment levels), three pure U₃Si₅ reference formulations (two enrichment levels), and two reject pellets with visible flaws (to qualify the technique). The ²³⁵U enrichments ranged from 0.2 to 8.8 wt. %. The nitride/silicide composites are candidate compositions for use as Accident Tolerant Fuel (ATF). The monophase U₃Si₅ material was included as a reference. Pellets from the same fabrication batches will be inserted in the Advanced Test Reactor at Idaho during 2016. We have also proposed a data format to build a database for characterization results of individual pellets. Neutron data reported in this report were collected in the LANSCE run cycle that started in September 2015 and ended in March 2016. This report provides the results for the characterized samples and discussion in the context of ANDE and APIE. We quantified the gamma spectra of several samples in their received state as well as after neutron irradiation to ensure that the neutron irradiation does not add significant activation that would complicate shipment and handling. We demonstrated synchrotron-based 3D X-ray microscopy on the composite fuel materials, providing unparalleled level of detail on the 3D microstructure. Furthermore, we initiated development of shielding containers allowing the characterizations presented herein while allowing handling of irradiated samples.