Behavior of high burnup advanced fuels for LWR during design-basis accidents

Amaya, Masaki  ; Udagawa, Yutaka  ; Narukawa, Takafumi ; Mihara, Takeshi  ; Sugiyama, Tomoyuki 

Advanced fuels which consist of cladding materials with high corrosion resistance and pellets with lower fission gas release have been developed by utilities and fuel vendors to improve fuel performance even in the high burnup region and also raise the safety level of current nuclear power plants to a higher one. In order to evaluate the adequacy of present safety criteria and safety margins in terms of such advanced fuels and provide a database for future regulation on them, Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) has started a new extensive research program called ALPS-II program (Phase II of Advanced LWR Fuel Performance and Safety program). This program is primarily composed of tests simulating a reactivity-initiated accident (RIA) and a loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) on high burnup advanced fuels shipped from European nuclear power plants. This paper describes an outline of this program and some experimental results with respect to RIA and LOCA which have been obtained in this program.