Plans for irradiation, post-irradiation examination and modeling of zrc coated particle

Ueta, Shohei   ; Aihara, Jun ; Yasuda, Atsushi; Ishibashi, Hideharu; Sawa, Kazuhiro

Developments of the technology for Zirconium Carbide (ZrC) coated fuel particle, which is one of candidates as Very High Temperature gas-cooled Reactor (VHTR) fuels, are on the progress. The following studies were carried out to investigate the irradiation performance of ZrC coating layer; a irradiation test, post irradiation examinations with ZrC coated dummy particle and fuel performance modeling for fuel and safety design. For the irradiation test, it can be said that the performance of ZrC coating layer against neutron irradiation is the most important. In this viewpoint, irradiation test will be carried out by High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) in Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and irradiation condition should be settled over 610n/m of fast neutron flux, as much as that of VHTR condition. For post irradiation examinations, failure integrity measurement, ceramography and SEM observation should be carried out to develop fuel failure model of ZrC coated fuel particles.