Quantification of ATF concept assessment factors using multiphysics simulations

In pursuit of a quantitative method of comparing accident tolerant fuel concepts to traditional fuel behaviors, a method of applying failure probabilities in an existing fuel assessment framework is proposed. To demonstrate this process, an example case is undertaken by utilizing coupled multiphysics codes to investigate uranium silicide and uranium oxide fuel behaviors during a postulated reactivity insertion accident. An upper limit on each fuel system's surface cladding temperature is used to classify pass and fail cases on perturbed simulations. Sensitivity analysis reduces the dimensionality of the problem and a global geometric classification method predicts the limit surface separating pass and fail cases in the hyperspace made up of sensitive input variables. Numerically integrating this surface yields the probability of failure of the fuel concepts. Results demonstrate the method's viability as a fuel evaluation technique, but ongoing work will allow for quantification of proposed concept assessment factors. (authors)