Investigations of fuel behavior are carried out in close connection with experimental
research, operation feedback and computational analyses. The comprehensive understanding
of fuel rod behavior and accurate prediction of the lifetime in normal operation and in
accident conditions are part of the defense in depth concept.
In this connection, OECD NEA sets up the public domain database on nuclear fuel
performance experiments – International Fuel Performance Experiments (IFPE) database,
with the aim of providing a comprehensive and well-qualified database on UO2 fuel with Zr
cladding for models development and codes validation.
The CNEA’s PHWR MOX Experiment belong to this database. This experiment was
carried out in the High Flux Reactor (HFR) of Petten, Holland. It involves six MOX rods
prepared and controlled in the CNEA’s “Alpha” Facility (Argentina).
The objective of the experiment was to verify the fabrication processes and the study of
the fuel behavior with respect to cladding failure due to Stress Corrosion Cracking (SCC)
under Pellet Cladding Interaction (PCI) conditions. These rods were irradiated from 0 until 15
MWd/kgU.
The code TRANSURANUS version “v1m1j09” is assessed against the database CNEA
PHWR MOX in order to verify the capability of the code in predicting the cladding failures
due to SCC. Comparisons with the experimental data and the results obtained with BACO
code developed by “CNEA” group of Bariloche are presented. Sensitivity calculations are
also performed for supporting the analyses of the results, improving the level of
understanding of the code capabilities. The main conclusion is that the clad failure propensity
of the rods belonging to the PHWR CNEA MOX experiment is conservatively assessed