Behavior under LOCA conditions of Enhanced Accident Tolerant Chromium Coated Zircaloy-4 Claddings
Résumé
For enhanced accident tolerant fuels for light water reactors application, chromium coatings on zirconium based nuclear fuel claddings are developed and studied at CEA in the framework of the French CEA-EDF-AREVA collaborative program. The results obtained so far, mainly on Zircaloy-4 substrate, show very good corrosion resistance in nominal conditions and significant enhancement of the resistance of the material to oxidation in steam at high temperature (HT), up to 1300C, with a drastic decrease of hydrogen release and/or pick-up. The present paper reports some new results obtained on chromium coated Zircaloy-4 claddings tested in loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) conditions. In order to investigate the potential effect of the coating on the cladding mechanical behavior at HT and the capacity of the coating to sustain significant substrate deformation (i.e., during ballooning until burst occurrence) without generalized cracking/peeling, a preliminary limited set of internal pressure creep and temperature ramp tests have been performed in steam environment thanks to the EDGAR facility. The thermalmechanical tests were done for testing/burst temperatures ranging from 600C ($\alpha_{Zr}$ phase domain) up to 1000C (($\beta_{Zr}$ phase domain) on 50 cm long low-tin Zircaloy-4 cladding samples with a 15$\mu$m thick outer chromium coating.
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201600002612.pdf (2.92 Mo)
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2016_08_19_Brachet-CEA-Topfuel2016_Cr-coated-Zr-clad-LOCA_V2.pdf (2.06 Mo)
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