Seawater effects on the soundness of spent fuel cladding tube

使用済燃料被覆管健全性への海水の影響

本岡 隆文; 上野 文義  ; 山本 正弘 

Motooka, Takafumi; Ueno, Fumiyoshi; Yamamoto, Masahiro

福島第一原子力発電所事故時には、緊急冷却のため、2から4号機の使用済燃料プールに海水が注入された。海水は使用済燃料被覆管に局部腐食を生じる可能性があり、局部腐食部からの核分裂生成物等の漏出が懸念される。しかしながら、使用済燃料被覆管の海水中での腐食挙動等は、よくわかっていない。そこで、使用済被覆管の腐食と機械的性質に与える海水の影響を、BWR燃料被覆管を用いて調査した。まず、使用済燃料被覆管を80Cの希釈海水に300h浸漬した後、目視観察、断面観察、機械強度試験を実施した。また、局部腐食感受性を評価するため、希釈海水の塩化物イオン濃度を変えて孔食電位を測定した。浸漬後の被覆管には、目視観察及び断面観察で局部腐食は観察されなかった。また、希釈海水に浸漬した被覆管には局部腐食は生起しないため、機械的強度の劣化は認められなかった。さらに、1.0Vを超えても局部腐食は起こらなかった。これらの結果は、使用済燃料被覆管は海水中で局部腐食が起こり難いことを示唆している。

At the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, seawater was injected into spent fuel pools of Unit 2-4 for the emergency cooling. Seawater might cause localized corrosion of spent fuel cladding. This would lead to leakage of not only fissile materials but also fission products from fuel cladding. The behavior, however, is not understood well. In this paper, the effects of seawater on corrosion behavior and mechanical property of were studied by using a spent fuel cladding from a BWR. We immersed the spent cladding tubes in diluted artificial seawater for 300h at 353 K, and conducted their visual, cross-sectional and strength examinations. As a localized corrosion index, the pitting potentials of specimens fabricated from the cladding were measured as functions of chloride ion concentration ranging from 20 to 2500 ppm. The visual examination showed that localized corrosion has not occurred, and cross-sectional examination showed no cracks. The strength of immersed tubes was comparable to that of non-immersed tubes. Additionally, pitting potential could not be measured over 1.0 V; pitting corrosion was hardly occurred. These results suggested that the specimens from the spent fuel cladding tube was very resistant to localized corrosion.