Assessment of different fuel design options with SiC cladding for light water reactors

It is very important to avoid high tensile stresses in SiC if it is to be used safely as the cladding material in LWRs. To achieve this goal, three fuel design options are examined here: fuel pellets with a 10% vol central void, adding 10% vol BeO in UO2 fuel and replacing the gas gap with Lead-Bismuth Eutectic (LBE) bond. For each case, a neutronic analysis is first applied using CASMO-4E to obtain the required enrichment to achieve a fuel average burnup of 50 MWd/kgU. The fuel performance code FRAPCON, specifically FRAPCON-3.3 and FRAPCON-EP, is modified and then used to simulate the effects of steady-state irradiation in each case for typical PWR peak rod conditions. Key parameters like fuel average temperature and plenum pressure are examined for the relative performance of each approach. The results show that all three options can improve the fuel performance by lowering the fuel temperature as well as the plenum pressure. Fuel pellets with a central void design offers the most advantages since the larger void volume in the fuel rod results in the lowest plenum pressure, which is the limiting condition for safe operation of the SiC cladding. (authors)