Fuel pin bowing and related investigation of WWER-440 control rod influence on power release inside of neighbouring fuel pins

The purpose of this work consists in investigation of the WWER-440 control rod (CR) influence on space power distribution, especially from viewpoint of the values and gradient occurrence that could result in static and cyclic loads with some consequences, e.g. fuel pin bowing. As known, CR can cause power peaks in periphery fuel pins of adjacent operating assemblies because of the butt joint design of the absorbing adapter to the CR fuel part, that is, presence of the water cavity resulting in a flash up of thermal neutrons. As a consequence, beside well-known peaks in axial power distribution, above power gradients can occur inside of mentioned fuel pins. Because of complicated geometry and material composition of the CR, the detailed calculations concerning both above phenomena are complicated, too. Therefore it is useful to acquire appropriate experimental data to investigate mentioned influence and compare them with calculations. Since detailed power distributions cannot be obtained in the NPP, needed information is provided by means of experiments on research reactors. In case of measurements inside of fuel pins, special (e.g. track) detectors placed between fuel pellets are used. Such works are relatively complicated and time consuming, therefore an evaluation based on mathematical modelling and numerical approximation was proposed by means of that, and using measured power release in some selected fuel pins, information about power release inside of one of these fuel pins, can be obtained. For this purpose, an experiment on light water, zero-power research reactor LR-0 was realized and axial power distribution measurements were performed in a WWER-440 type core near to an authentic CR model. Application of the above evaluation method is demonstrated on one ''investigated'' fuel pin neighbouring CR by means of following results: 1. Axial power distribution inside of investigated fuel pin in two opposite positions on its pellets surface that are situated to- and outwards CR. 2. Axial distribution of the axial gradient component of the (r , z) - power distribution inside of investigated fuel pin in above opposite positions on pellets surface. 3. Axial distribution of the radial gradient component of the (r , z) - power distribution inside of investigated fuel pin in above opposite positions on pellets surface. 4. Azimuthal power distribution inside of investigated fuel pin on the pellet surface in horizontal plane with axial coordinate corresponding to the position of the power peak in above (usual) axial power distribution. (author)