Modeling of the performance of weapons MOX fuel in light water reactors

Both the Russian Federation and the US are pursing mixed uranium-plutonium oxide (MOX) fuel in light water reactors (LWRs) for the disposition of excess plutonium from disassembled nuclear warheads. Fuel performance models are used which describe the behavior of MOX fuel during irradiation under typical power reactor conditions. The objective of this project is to perform the analysis of the thermal, mechanical, and chemical behavior of weapons MOX fuel pins under LWR conditions. If fuel performance analysis indicates potential questions, it then becomes imperative to assess the fuel pin design and the proposed operating strategies to reduce the probability of clad failure and the associated release of radioactive fission products into the primary coolant system. Applying the updated code to anticipated fuel and reactor designs, which would be used for weapons MOX fuel in the US, and analyzing the performance of the WWER-100 fuel for Russian weapons plutonium disposition are addressed in this report. The COMETHE code was found to do an excellent job in predicting fuel central temperatures. Also, despite minor predicted differences in thermo-mechanical behavior of MOX and UO2 fuels, the preliminary estimate indicated that, during normal reactor operations, these deviations remained within limits foreseen by fuel pin design