Preliminary Assessment of Several Candidates Accident Tolerant Fuel

After the Fukushima Daiichi events, the enhanced accident tolerance fuel became a hot topic. This paper analyses three candidate fuel systems FCM-SiC, U₃Si₂-SiC, and UO₂₊BeO-FeCrAl. Through the analysis shows that they have better performance than UO₂-Zr system during the LOCA and SBO conditions. During the LOCA condition, the cladding's peak temperature of FCM-SiC system is lower than standard UO₂-Zr system 257K. The amount of hydrogen generated is also decreased due to the stability of FeCrAl and SiC. All fuel systems's failure time have been put off. The fast failure system is UO₂₊BeO-FeCrAl during SBO condition. It's still 2000 seconds later than the standard UO₂-Zr system. By the preliminary analysis shows that FCM-SiC is the best one. (author)