The Feasibility study on SiC composite fuel cladding for the Accident Tolerant Fuel to the existing PWR plants, 2; Study on fuel rod behavior during operation

Furumoto, Kenichiro*; Teshima, Hideyuki*; Watanabe, Seiichi*; Yamamoto, Teruhisa*; Shirasu, Noriko  ; Saito, Hiroaki; Yamashita, Shinichiro   

Mitsubishi Nuclear Fuel (MNF) plans to evaluate an influence of Silicon Carbide (SiC) composite cladding upon fuel rod behavior in current pressurized water reactors (PWR). In this presentation, the evaluation result of the applicability of fuel rod with SiC composite cladding for a conventional PWR will be reported. For the applicability evaluations of SiC composite to conventional PWR, both of analytical evaluations and out-of-pile tests for SiC composite were conducted. Analytical evaluations were performed by Mitsubishi's own fuel rod design code and the fuel rod behavior evaluation code developed by JAEA. These codes were modified to evaluate the behavior of the fuel rod with SiC composite cladding.