China
Africa
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
Nuclear Fuel Recycling
Published in Kenneth D. Kok, Nuclear Engineering Handbook, 2016
Patricia Paviet, Michael F. Simpson
The chemical composition and the associated phases of irradiated nuclear fuel can be determined by the state-of-the art post-irradiation examination (PIE) as established at AEC, Cadarache, France, and at the Institute of Transuranic Elements (ITU) at Karlsruhe, Germany. A suite of shielded PIE equipment called the Irradiated Materials Characterization Laboratory (IMCL) is currently being installed at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) (Christensen and Lehto, 2008, 8). Plans include to install in an individual shielded enclosure, a shielded electron probe micro-analyzer (EPMA), a focused ion beam instrument (FIB), and a micro-scale X-ray diffractometer (MXRD). This hot-cell environment where the instruments are installed side by side allows researchers to quickly pass samples between instruments. New PIE equipments at INL allow researchers to qualify and understand the behavior of new nuclear test fuels on a micro-scale. PIE will confirm the overall composition of irradiated fuel as provided by calculations readily from the established fission yields and cross-section data. Examples of calculations (IAEA, 1974) differentiate due to the type of fission, captured cross-sections, and irradiation time (burn-up). The calculated compositions are mainly applied to ceramic oxide fuels and changes in oxygen balance occurring with burn-up are established (Holleck and Kleykamp, 1970) where the redistribution of oxygen under the radial temperature gradient of the fuel element is considered in relation to its effect on oxygen to metal ratios and oxygen potentials.
Impact of nuclear data revised from JENDL-4.0 to JENDL-5 on PWR spent fuel nuclide composition
Published in Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, 2023
Tomoaki Watanabe, Kenichi Tada, Tomohiro Endo, Akio Yamamoto
The burnup calculation estimates the nuclide composition of irradiated nuclear fuels and related quantities such as radioactivity. This calculation requires various nuclear data, e.g. the nuclear reaction cross section, the fission yield, and the decay data such as half-lives and decay branching ratio. The nuclear data should be validated in burnup calculations with the post-irradiation examination (PIE) data [1]] for the safety evaluation of the nuclide composition in the spent fuel. PIE data allow the validation of nuclear data that have a large impact on the nuclide composition of nuclear fuel. PIE data are particularly effective for the validation of nuclear data that are difficult to validate with criticality experiments, such as cross sections of minor actinide and fission product (FP), fission yields, and decay data.