Water reactor fuel element modelling at high burnup and its experimental support. Proceedings of a technical committee meeting

The Technical Committee Meeting on Fuel Element Modelling at High Burnup and its Experimental Support was recommended by the International Working Group on Fuel Performance and Technology (IWGFPT). Its subject had been touched on in many of the IAEA's activities; however for the first time modellers and experimentalists were brought together to have an exchange of views on the research under way and to identify areas where new knowledge is necessary to improve the safety, reliability and/or economics of nuclear fuel. The timely organization of this meeting in conjunction with the second meeting of the Co-ordinated Research Programme on Fuel Modelling at Extended Burnup, in short ''FUMEX'', allowed fruitful participation of representatives of developing countries which are only rarely exposed to such a scientific event. The thirty-nine papers presented covered the status of codes and experimental facilities and the main phenomena affecting the fuel during irradiation, namely: thermal fuel performance, clad corrosion and pellet-cladding interaction (PCI) and fission gas release (FGR). Refs, figs, tabs