Crud deposition on fuel in WWER reactors

Reliability of nuclear fuel and radiation fields surrounding primary systems are important aspects of overall nuclear reactor safety. Corrosion product (crud) deposition on fuel surfaces has implications for fuel performance through heat transfer and local chemistry modifications. Crud is currently one of the key industry issues and has been implicated in several recent cases of crud-related fuel failures and core plugging. Activated crud is deposited on out-of-core surfaces, mainly steam generators, resulting in high radiation fields and high doses of plant staff. Due to radiation build-up in primary circuit systems, decontamination of primary systems components and steam generators is used. Several issues involving decontamination were observed in some cases. After decontamination higher corrosion product release occurs followed by subsequent crud deposition on fuel surfaces. The paper summarizes experience with water chemistry and decontamination that can influence crud deposition on fuel surfaces. The following areas are discussed: 1) Experience with crud deposition, primary water chemistry and decontamination under operating conditions; 2) The behaviour of organic compounds in primary coolant and on fuel surfaces; 3) A proposed experimental programme to study crud deposition. (authors)