Download or read book Results from the DOE Advanced Gas Reactor Fuel Development and Qualification Program written by and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modular HTGR designs were developed to provide natural safety, which prevents core damage under all design basis accidents and presently envisioned severe accidents. The principle that guides their design concepts is to passively maintain core temperatures below fission product release thresholds under all accident scenarios. This level of fuel performance and fission product retention reduces the radioactive source term by many orders of magnitude and allows potential elimination of the need for evacuation and sheltering beyond a small exclusion area. This level, however, is predicated on exceptionally high fuel fabrication quality and performance under normal operation and accident conditions. Germany produced and demonstrated high quality fuel for their pebble bed HTGRs in the 1980s, but no U.S. manufactured fuel had exhibited equivalent performance prior to the Advanced Gas Reactor (AGR) Fuel Development and Qualification Program. The design goal of the modular HTGRs is to allow elimination of an exclusion zone and an emergency planning zone outside the plant boundary fence, typically interpreted as being about 400 meters from the reactor. To achieve this, the reactor design concepts require a level of fuel integrity that is better than that claimed for all prior US manufactured TRISO fuel, by a few orders of magnitude. The improved performance level is about a factor of three better than qualified for German TRISO fuel in the 1980's. At the start of the AGR program, without a reactor design concept selected, the AGR fuel program selected to qualify fuel to an operating envelope that would bound both pebble bed and prismatic options. This resulted in needing a fuel form that could survive at peak fuel temperatures of 1250°C on a time-averaged basis and high burnups in the range of 150 to 200 GWd/MTHM (metric tons of heavy metal) or 16.4 to 21.8% fissions per initial metal atom (FIMA). Although Germany has demonstrated excellent performance of TRISO-coated UO2 particle fuel up to about 10% FIMA and 1150°C, UO2 fuel is known to have limitations because of CO formation and kernel migration at the high burnups, power densities, temperatures, and temperature gradients that may be encountered in the prismatic modular HTGRs. With uranium oxycarbide (UCO) fuel, the kernel composition is engineered to prevent CO formation and kernel migration, which are key threats to fuel integrity at higher burnups, temperatures, and temperature gradients. Furthermore, the recent poor fuel performance of UO2 TRISO fuel pebbles measured in Chinese irradiation testing in Russia and in German pebbles irradiated at 1250°C, and historic data on poorer fuel performance in safety testing of German pebbles that experienced burnups in excess of 10% FIMA [1] have each raised concern about the use of UO2 TRISO above 10% FIMA and 1150°C and the degree of margin available in the fuel system. This continues to be an active area of study internationally.
Download or read book The DOE Advanced Gas Reactor AGR Fuel Development and Qualification Program written by David Petti and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Department of Energy has established the Advanced Gas Reactor Fuel Development and Qualification Program to address the following overall goals: Provide a baseline fuel qualification data set in support of the licensing and operation of the Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP). Gas-reactor fuel performance demonstration and qualification comprise the longest duration research and development (R & D) task for the NGNP feasibility. The baseline fuel form is to be demonstrated and qualified for a peak fuel centerline temperature of 1250°C. Support near-term deployment of an NGNP by reducing market entry risks posed by technical uncertainties associated with fuel production and qualification. Utilize international collaboration mechanisms to extend the value of DOE resources. The Advanced Gas Reactor Fuel Development and Qualification Program consists of five elements: fuel manufacture, fuel and materials irradiations, postirradiation examination (PIE) and safety testing, fuel performance modeling, and fission product transport and source term evaluation. An underlying theme for the fuel development work is the need to develop a more complete fundamental understanding of the relationship between the fuel fabrication process, key fuel properties, the irradiation performance of the fuel, and the release and transport of fission products in the NGNP primary coolant system. Fuel performance modeling and analysis of the fission product behavior in the primary circuit are important aspects of this work. The performance models are considered essential for several reasons, including guidance for the plant designer in establishing the core design and operating limits, and demonstration to the licensing authority that the applicant has a thorough understanding of the in-service behavior of the fuel system. The fission product behavior task will also provide primary source term data needed for licensing. An overview of the program and recent progress will be presented.
Download or read book Completing the Design of the Advanced Gas Reactor Fuel Development and Qualification Experiments for Irradiation in the Advanced Test Reactor written by S. Blaine Grover and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States Department of Energy's Advanced Gas Reactor (AGR) Fuel Development and Qualification Program will be irradiating eight separate low enriched uranium (LEU) oxycarbide (UCO) tri-isotopic (TRISO) particle fuel (in compact form) experiments in the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) located at the newly formed Idaho National Laboratory (INL). These irradiations and fuel development are being accomplished to support development of the next generation reactors in the United States. The ATR has a long history of irradiation testing in support of reactor development and the INL has been designated as the new United States Department of Energy's lead laboratory for nuclear energy development. The ATR is one of the world's premiere test reactors for performing long term, high flux, and/or large volume irradiation test programs. These AGR fuel experiments will be irradiated over the next ten years to demonstrate and qualify new particle fuel for use in high temperature gas reactors. The goals of the irradiation experiments are to provide irradiation performance data to support fuel process development, to qualify fuel for normal operating conditions, to support development and validation of fuel performance and fission product transport models and codes, and to provide irradiated fuel and materials for post irradiation examination (PIE) and safety testing. The experiments, which will each consist of six separate capsules, will be irradiated in an inert sweep gas atmosphere with individual on-line temperature monitoring and control for each capsule. The swept gas will also have on-line fission product monitoring to track performance of the fuel in each individual capsule during irradiation.
Download or read book Irradiation of the First Advanced Gas Reactor Fuel Development and Qualification Experiment in the Advanced Test Reactor written by and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States Department of Energy's Advanced Gas Reactor (AGR) Fuel Development and Qualification Program will be irradiating eight separate tri-isotopic (TRISO) particle fuel (in compact form) experiments in the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) located at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). These irradiations and fuel development are being accomplished to support development of the next generation reactors in the United States. The ATR has a long history of irradiation testing in support of reactor development and the INL has been designated as the United States Department of Energy's lead laboratory for nuclear energy development. These AGR fuel experiments will be irradiated over the next ten years to demonstrate and qualify new particle fuel for use in high temperature gas reactors. The experiments, which will each consist of six separate capsules, will be irradiated in an inert sweep gas atmosphere with individual on-line temperature monitoring and control for each capsule. The swept gas will also have on-line fission product monitoring to track performance of the fuel in each individual capsule during irradiation. The design of the first experiment (designated AGR-1) was completed in 2005, and the fabrication and assembly of the test train as well as the support systems and fission product monitoring system that monitor and control the experiment during irradiation were completed in September 2006. The experiment was inserted in the ATR in December 2006, and is serving as a shakedown test of the multi-capsule experiment design that will be used in the subsequent irradiations as well as a test of the early variants of the fuel produced under this program. The experiment test train as well as the monitoring, control, and data collection systems are discussed and the status of the experiment is provided.
Download or read book Process Modeling Phase I Summary Report for the Advanced Gas Reactor Fuel Development and Qualification Program written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report summarizes the results of preliminary work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to demonstrate application of computational fluid dynamics modeling to the scale-up of a Fluidized Bed Chemical Vapor Deposition (FBCVD) process for nuclear fuels coating. Specifically, this work, referred to as Modeling Scale-Up Phase I, was conducted between January 1, 2006 and March 31, 2006 in support of the Advanced Gas Reactor (AGR) Program. The objective was to develop, demonstrate and "freeze" a version of ORNL's computational model of the TRI ISOtropic (TRISO) fuel-particle coating process that can be specifically used to assist coater scale-up activities as part of the production of AGR-2 fuel. The results in this report are intended to serve as input for making decisions about initiating additional FBCVD modeling work (referred to as Modeling Scale-Up Phase II) in support of AGR-2. The main computational tool used to implement the model is the general-purpose multiphase fluid-dynamics computer code known as MFIX (Multiphase Flow with Interphase eXchanges), which is documented in detail on the DOE-sponsored website http://www.mfix.org. Additional computational tools are also being developed by ORNL for post-processing MFIX output to efficiently summarize the important information generated by the coater simulations. The summarized information includes quantitative spatial and temporal measures (referred to as discriminating characteristics, or DCs) by which different coater designs and operating conditions can be compared and correlated with trends in product quality. The ORNL FBCVD modeling work is being conducted in conjunction with experimental coater studies at ORNL with natural uranium CO (NUCO) and surrogate fuel kernels. Data are also being obtained from ambient-temperature, spouted-bed characterization experiments at the University of Tennessee and theoretical studies of carbon and silicon carbide chemical vapor deposition kinetics at Iowa State University. Prior to the current scale-up activity, considerable effort has gone in to adapting the MFIX code to incorporate the unique features of fuel coating reactors and also in validating the resulting simulation features with experimental observations. Much of this work is documented in previous AGR reports and publications (Pannala et al., 2004, Pannala et al., 2005, Boyalakuntla et al., 2005a, Boyalakuntla et al., 2005b and Finney et al., 2005). As a result of the previous work described above, the ORNL coater model now has the capability for simulating full spatio-temporal details of the gas-particle hydrodynamics and gas-particle heat and mass transfer in the TRISO coater. This capability provides a great deal of information about many of the processes believed to control quality, but the model is not yet sufficiently developed to fully predict coating quality for any given coater design and/or set of operating conditions because the detailed chemical reaction kinetics needed to make the model fully predictive are not yet available. Nevertheless, the model at its current stage of development already provides the most comprehensive and detailed quantitative information available about gas flows, solid flows, temperatures, and species inside the coater during operation. This level of information ought to be highly useful in expediting the scale-up process (e.g., in correlating observations and minimizing the number of pilot-scale tests required). However, previous work had not yet demonstrated that the typical design and/or operating changes known to affect product quality at the lab scale could be clearly discriminated by the existing model. The Modeling Scale-Up Phase I work was initiated to produce such a demonstration, and two detailed examples are discussed in this report.
Download or read book U S Department of Energy Performance and Accountability Report Fiscal Year 2003 written by and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Review of DOE s Nuclear Energy Research and Development Program written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2008-05-01 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There has been a substantial resurgence of interest in nuclear power in the United States over the past few years. One consequence has been a rapid growth in the research budget of DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy (NE). In light of this growth, the Office of Management and Budget included within the FY2006 budget request a study by the National Academy of Sciences to review the NE research programs and recommend priorities among those programs. The programs to be evaluated were: Nuclear Power 2010 (NP 2010), Generation IV (GEN IV), the Nuclear Hydrogen Initiative (NHI), the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP)/Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI), and the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) facilities. This book presents a description and analysis of each program along with specific findings and recommendations. It also provides an assessment of program priorities and oversight.
Download or read book On the Extension of Modern Best estimate Plus Uncertainy Methodologies to Future Fast Reactor and Advanced Fuel Licensing Initial Evaluation of Issues written by and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Closing the fuel cycle is the major technical challenge to expanding nuclear energy to meet the world's need for benign, environmentally safe electrical power. Closing the fuel cycle means getting the maximum amount of energy possible out of uranium fuel while in turn minimizing the amount of high-level waste that must be stored. DOE's Advance Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI) program addresses this challenge by recycling the transuranic (TRU) isotopes contained in spent nuclear fuel; recycling, in turn, minimizes the amount of high-level waste that would require storage in repositories. Developing new fuels and the plants that burn them is a lengthy and expensive process, typically spanning a period of two decades from concept to final licensing. A unique challenge to meeting the AFCI objectives in this area is that the experimental database is seriously incomplete. As such, using a traditional, heavily empirical approach to develop and qualify fuels and plant operation over the operational conditions of a AFCI plant will be very challenging, if not impossible, within the expected schedule and budgetary constraints. To address this concern AFCI has launched an advanced modeling and simulation (M & S) approach to revolutionize fuel development and fast reactor design. This new approach is predicated upon transferring the recent advances in computational sciences and computer technologies into the development of these program elements. The licensing process that has historically been used by the NRC for fuels qualification is based upon using a large body of experimental work to qualify and license a new fuel. If a modeling and simulation approach with more directed experimentation is to be considered as an alternative approach for licensing, then a framework needs to be developed that can be agreed to with the NRC early in the developmental process. The use of modeling and simulation as a means of demonstrating that a design can meet NRC requirements is not new and has precedence in the NRC. The method is generically referred to as a 'Best Estimate plus Uncertainty' approach (BE+U), since the goal of the methodology is to compare the model value (best estimate) plus any uncertainty to a figure of merit like cladding temperature. The challenges for extending the BE+U (1) method for fuel qualification for an Advanced Reactor Fuel are driven by: schedule, the need for data, the data sufficiency, the identification of important phenomenon, the process of validation (with focus on the multi-scale model), and the need to produce and extended best estimate plus uncertainty methodology. This paper examines these issues an offers up a proposed set of methods that extend the current BE+U methodology address most if not all of these challenges.
Download or read book Comprehensive Nuclear Materials written by Todd R Allen and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2011-05-12 with total page 3552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprehensive Nuclear Materials, Five Volume Set discusses the major classes of materials suitable for usage in nuclear fission, fusion reactors and high power accelerators, and for diverse functions in fuels, cladding, moderator and control materials, structural, functional, and waste materials. The work addresses the full panorama of contemporary international research in nuclear materials, from Actinides to Zirconium alloys, from the worlds' leading scientists and engineers. Critically reviews the major classes and functions of materials, supporting the selection, assessment, validation and engineering of materials in extreme nuclear environment Fully integrated with F-elements.net, a proprietary database containing useful cross-referenced property data on the lanthanides and actinides Details contemporary developments in numerical simulation, modelling, experimentation, and computational analysis, for effective implementation in labs and plants
Download or read book Energy Research Abstracts written by and published by . This book was released on 1994-12 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book U S Department of Energy Performance and Accountability Report Fiscal Year 2002 written by and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Government Reports Annual Index written by and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 1362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sections 1-2. Keyword Index.--Section 3. Personal author index.--Section 4. Corporate author index.-- Section 5. Contract/grant number index, NTIS order/report number index 1-E.--Section 6. NTIS order/report number index F-Z.
Download or read book Energy Insider written by and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Scientific and Technical Aerospace Reports written by and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 892 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Clean Coal Technology written by John W. Rich and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2008-05 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Coproduction of power, fuels & chemicals offers an innovative, economically advantageous means of achieving the nation¿s energy goals. Coproduction involves the integration of 3 major building blocks: Gasification of coal or other hydrocarbon fuels to produce synthesis gas (syngas); Conversion of a portion of the syngas to high-value products such as liquid fuels & chemicals; & Combustion of syngas to produce electric power. Contents: Description of Gasification & Power Generation Technology; Syngas Conversion Processes; Industrial Applications of Gasification; Market Potential for Coproduction; Early Entrance Coproduction Plants; Conclusions; Bibliography; Contacts for CCT Projects & U.S. DOE CCT Program. Illustrations.
Download or read book DOE this Month written by and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Secretary s Annual Report to Congress written by United States. Department of Energy and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 1096 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
