Post irradiation examination for the FUGEN high burn-up MOX fuel assembly. 1. Nondestructive examination

The 'E09' MOX fuel assembly was irradiated at the FUGEN from February 1990 to January 1997, and its average burn-up reached 37.7 GWd/t. In order to reach high burn-up this E09 assembly had the following characteristics comparing the demonstration ATR (DATR) MOX fuel assembly. 1. Axial fissile content distribution was introduced for the E09 assembly to reduce axial power peaking. 2. Four UO2Gd2O3 fuel rods were installed in the E09 assembly to compromise power discrepancy at the beginning of irradiation in a core. After four years cooling, it was transported to Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI) Tokai Research Establishment in 2001. Post Irradiation Examinations (PIE) were started in July 2001 at JAERI, and the nondestructive examinations were completed in March 2002. The destructive examinations have been started in April 2002, and will be completed by March 2004. In this report, the result of nondestructive examinations were summarized, and evaluation of irradiation performance was discussed. The integrity of fuel assembly during irradiation was confirmed in the nondestructive PIE. These results will be available for LWR MOX fuel program in Japan and for CANDU-OPTION program, which is one of Russian surplus weapon plutonium disposition programs with AECL in Canada. (author)