BNES nuclear fuel performance conference 15-19 october 1973

This conference (held by the British Nuclear Energy Society between the 15 and 19 October,1973) attracted 42 papers from ten countries on water reactor topics. Only four of these papers dealt specifically with safety topics, but many others were concerned with performance phenomena having a direct bearing on safety, such as fission gas release, densification, power ramps and quality assurance. Indeed the distribution of papers revealed a major preoccupation amongst the major fuel designers with stability of UO2 (creep and densification) and with power ramps. There were only three papers directly concerned with the deformation behaviour of cladding alloys, but many others were concerned with overall fuel pin performance (five papers on fuel pin modelling), of which the clad behaviour is a most important component. This paper reviews the BNES Conference papers and discussion under the main topic headings