Experimental Research and Development of Safety Analysis Systems for Advanced Types of Fuel Rods

Abstract

According to the development of the concept of “zero failure” or “zero fuel element defect”, accepted in 2011, which consists in reducing the number of fuel elements that are depressurized in the process of operation to the reached level in the leading countries in nuclear energy (10−6–10−5 defective fuel rods) and avoidance of fuel assemblies with non-hermetic cladding of fuel rods for further operation, including defects with a “gas leak” type, new promising fuels are being developed and introduced, including methods for justifying their safety. Thus, to ensure reliability and safety of new fuel types, it is necessary to provide procedures for monitoring current performance characteristics at all stages of the life cycle of fuel rods. In this paper, experience is given on the development and implementation of instrumentation and methods for monitoring of fuel rods with advanced types of nuclear fuel for VVER reactors that ensure the reliability, safety and competitiveness of technologies associated with the use of advanced fuel rod types, and the implementation of associated components, systems and equipment for monitoring and diagnostics. The features of the applied techniques are presented, and the new system of requirements for the implemented equipment created on their basis. This research continues, and the analysis of intermediate experimental data is carried out in this article.

Determination of temperature dependences of Young's modulus and internal friction of fuel cladding by resonance method

“…A distinctive feature of the module is a uniform amplitude-frequency characteristic of the measuring channel in the frequency interval 20 -200 kHz with its high sensitivity and noise immunity, which allows measurements of elastic characteristics and internal friction of samples in a wide range of their q-factor. In this case, the sample is clamped between the pointed ends of the acoustic waveguides, one of which provides the transfer of vibrations from exciting piezoelectric transducer to the sample, and the second -from the sample to receiving transducer [4][5][6][7].…”