Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Fuel safety and performance are always important topics to nuclear utilities. This proposal is to demonstrate CANDU fuel reliability under Normal Operating Conditions (NOC), and spent fuel safety margin under Loss of Coolant Accident (LOCA) Conditions. To meet an increasing demand for energy, as well as improve plant and core design efficiencies to remain competitive with other energy sources, nuclear utilities took measures to meet these needs. Project#1 is to support operation by achieving "zero fuel defects". A robust methodology, using a statistical based approach, to assess the safety margin present in the current design and operation of CANDU fuels with a high degree of accuracy will be developed. The actual fuel manufacturing and operating data will be used to predict the probability of fuel failure during NOC. A generic set of operating data will be created using refuelling methodologies (WIMS/RFSP) that coincide closely with the fuelling guidelines from power utilities. A COMSOL Multiphysics® fuel performance code (FAST), which was developed at RMC and validated against industry standard codes, will be used to predict fuel failure. Spent fuel pool storage has become a focus of international concerns after the severe loss of power accident in 2011 at the Fukushima Daiichi power plants. Project #2 will confirm a LOCA in a CANDU spent fuel pool has sufficiently slow post-dryout progression that operator intervention can be assured and, hence, to preclude the possibility of runaway oxidation and zirconium fires. The proposed project will address the need for a CANDU severe accident modelling tool as outlined by the OECD in their 2015 report. Phenomena ranking tables developed by the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, and the OECD-Nuclear Energy Agency will be used to support the model development.