Assessments of Sheath Strain and Fission Gas Release Data From 20 Years of Power Reactor Fuel Irradiations

Abstract

Over the past 20 years, many fuel elements or bundles discharged from Canadian CANDU power reactors have been examined in the AECL hot cells. The post-irradiation examination (PIE) database covers a wide range of operating conditions, from which fuel performance characteristics can be assessed. In the present analysis, a PIE database was compiled representing elements from a total of 129 fuel bundles, of which 26% (34 bundles) were confirmed to have one or more defective elements. This comprehensive database was assessed in terms of measured sheath strain and fission gas release (FGR) for intact elements, in an attempt to identify any changes in these parameters over the history of CANDU reactor operation. Results from this assessment indicate that, for the data that are typical of normal CANDU operating conditions, tensile sheath strain and FGR have remained within 0.5% and 8%, respectively. Those data beyond these ranges are from fuel operated under abnormal conditions, not representative of normal operation, and thus do not indicate a trend toward unexpected fuel behaviour. The distributions of the PIE measurements indicate that maximum expected sheath strains and FGR for normally operated fuel are 0.7% and 13%, respectively.