Jules horowitz reactor update of the experimental capacity

C. Blandin (1) , J. Estrade (1) , J. Pierre (1) , P. Jaecki (1) , C. Colin (1) , T. Dousson (1) , L. Ferry (1) , C. Gonnier (1)

1 CEA-DES (ex-DEN) - CEA-Direction des Energies (ex-Direction de l'Energie Nucléaire)

The Jules Horowitz Reactor (JHR) is a high performance Material Testing Reactor under construction in southern France (CEA/Cadarache research centre), that will carry out experimental irradiations for Nuclear Power Plants (NPP) and fuel vendors, utilities, safety organizations and research institutes. Therefore CEA is developing a set of test devices that will be operational for the start-up of the reactor or few years later. These experimental hosting systems will have to fulfil experimental needs concerning current NPP technologies (GEN II-III) and future reactors (GEN IV) as well. Experimental programs could be related to either fuel basis properties acquisition, mastering of margins or improvement of fuel products (clad and pellet), in term of performance, safety, maximum burn up, innovative materials or extension of validation domain of fuel performance codes.Then the present paper describes the main experimental hosting systems currently under design The MADISON device will be available at the JHR start up, and will allow testing the comparative behaviour of several instrumented fuel rods (from 1 up to 8 rods, of up to 60 cm fissile stack height) under NPP normal operating conditions (no clad failure expected). The ADELINE device will be available for the JHR start up, and will allow testing a single experimental rod up to its operating limits. The fuel rod will be tested under conditions that correspond to off-normal situations with possible occurrence of a clad failure. The first version so called ADELINE power ramps will focus on the clad failure occurrence during one of these abnormal situations.The LORELEI device will be available few years after the reactor start up and will allow testing a single rod under accidental situation that may lead to fuel damage. It will be able to reproduce all sequences of a LOCA-type transient, including the re-irradiation, the loss of coolant and the quenching phases, on a separate effect approach.In-core and in reflector material test devices are presented as well, corresponding to large ranges of irradiation conditions, in terms of temperature, neutron flux and neutron spectra. A special attention focuses on the improvement of the thermal stability and gradients in the interest zones of irradiated samples. Some specific devices are described such as equipments designed to the qualification of reactor pressure vessel steels (OCCITANE test device), to the studies of creep-swelling of structural materials (MICA test device) or to the study of the stress corrosion cracking assisted by irradiation phenomena (CLOE test device a corrosion loop with an accurate water chemistry monitoring for PWR or BWR requirement).

Mots clés: JHR - Test device

Domaines: Physique Nucléaire Expérimentale [nucl-ex]; Physique Nucléaire Théorique [nucl-th]

C. Blandin, J. Estrade, J. Pierre, P. Jaecki, C. Colin, et al.. Jules horowitz reactor update of the experimental capacity. Research Reactor Fuel Management (RRFM) 2015, Apr 2015, Bucarest, Romania. ⟨cea-02509280⟩