Speakers
Description
Enhanced accident tolerant fuel (EATF) were developed in the wake of Fukushima accident to provide some delays in case of severe accident. Today the highest TRL product is clearly coated cladding, more specifically chromium coated cladding.
EDF is currently investigating the benefits that would be provided by EATF in its own plants. Some lead test rods are irradiated. They reached their first cycle last year. Their visual appearance is bright as already shown previously.
Based on these observations and using all the data available, EDF has started to assess the benefit of these EATF. The method is simply to compare a standard fuel with an EATF one at a given burnup by extrapolating what is already known or published.
At this point, the benefit of EATF begins to be revealed in various safety files. One key takeaway from all this work is that if hydrogen pick-up is drastically reduced, it would generate margin as hydrogen concentration is the root of many safety criteria today.
In a second step some thoughts about some specificities of EATF such as the loss of adhesion or the lack of coating at some elevation are discussed or even the scratch resulting from the fuel rod insertion into the fuel assembly.
Finally, the specificities of the French closed fuel cycle are adressed as they could bring additional difficulties to the licensing of EATF.
