Describing VVER-1000 reactors fuel rod performance in the normal operation and high burn-up conditions

Abstract

The main purpose of the work is to develop a valid physical model and an accurate numerical technique to describe the occurred phenomenon of the VVER-1000 fuel rod, during its lifetime, especially for high burn up conditions. There are many factors involved in the fuel rod performance, which each of them, intricately affect its behavior during normal operation. The accurate prediction of the fuel behavior is obligatory and will be utilizable for the fuel designers. In geneval, fuel rod behavior is affected by the various chemical, mechanical, and thermo neutronic phenomena. For a detailed assessment of the fuel behavior inside the reactor core, the mentioned factors and the dominant aspects must be modeled accurately. The physical models and correlations used in this paper, are chosen in such a way that all the simulation results be in a good agreement with the available post-irradiation examination data (PIE) and outputs of the FRAPCON-3.3 fuel rod performance code.

Keywords

• fuel behavior
• physical model
• simulation
• vver-1000
• frapcon