Effect of PCMI restraint on bubble size distribution in the rim structure of UO2 fuel

Generally, the bubble size in the rim structure of UO2 is not dependent on the fuel burnup and the bubble pressure is higher than that in the equilibrium condition. However it was also observed that if the fuel pellet is not restrained, the size of the bubbles in the rim structure could be larger than that in the restraint condition. Although the wide variety of rim bubble sizes and porosities possibly result from an external restrain effect, the quantitative method to analyze the effect of PCMI restraint on bubble distribution in the rim is not available at the moment. In this paper, a method is developed which can be used to analyze the effect of PCMI restraint on the bubble distribution in the rim structure of UO2 fuel based on the data in the literatures. The total number of Xe atoms in the rim bubbles per unit rim volume could be derived by a summation of the number of Xe atoms of each rim bubble in a unit rim volume. The number of Xe atoms of each rim bubble could be calculated by the Van der Waals equation of state and the pressure expressed by p=σ+C/r, where C is an unknown constant to be determined as a function of the temperature and the burnup. On the other hand, the total number of Xe atoms in the rim bubbles per unit rim volume can also be calculated by Xe depression data. If the fuel pellet is not restrained, the uniform hydrostatic stress, σ is zero. Hence if the data of the fuel disk without a restraint is used, a constant C can be obtained at 823K and a local burnup of 90 GWd/t. Although the local burnup of PCMI restraint case is slightly different from that without PCMI restraint, the value derived above is used for the analysis of PCMI restraint case. The calculated bubble distribution with PCMI restraint was similar to the measured one. Because the effect of PCMI restraint on bubble size increased with the bubble size, the development of a large bubble was suppressed. Hence, the PCMI restraint caused a typical bubble size in the rim and decreased the porosity and fuel swelling as compared with the no PCMI restrained condition. (author)