TY - JOUR
T1 - Multiscale development of a fission gas thermal conductivity model
T2 - Coupling atomic, meso and continuum level simulations
AU - Tonks, Michael R.
AU - Millett, Paul C.
AU - Nerikar, Pankaj
AU - Du, Shiyu
AU - Andersson, David
AU - Stanek, Christopher R.
AU - Gaston, Derek
AU - Andrs, David
AU - Williamson, Richard
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank Jason Hales from Idaho National Laboratory for his help with the BISON fuel performance code and Mark Horstemeyer from Mississippi State University for discussions on ISV theory. This work was funded by the Department of Energy Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation program. This manuscript has been authored by Battelle Energy Alliance, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC07-05ID14517 with the US Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes.
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - Fission gas production and evolution significantly impact the fuel performance, causing swelling, a reduction in the thermal conductivity and fission gas release. However, typical empirical models of fuel properties treat each of these effects separately and uncoupled. Here, we couple a fission gas release model to a model of the impact of fission gas on the fuel thermal conductivity. To quantify the specific impact of grain boundary (GB) bubbles on the thermal conductivity, we use atomistic and mesoscale simulations. Atomistic molecular dynamic simulations were employed to determine the GB thermal resistance. These values were then used in mesoscale heat conduction simulations to develop a mechanistic expression for the effective GB thermal resistance of a GB containing gas bubbles, as a function of the percentage of the GB covered by fission gas. The coupled fission gas release and thermal conductivity model was implemented in Idaho National Laboratory's BISON fuel performance code to model the behavior of a 10-pellet LWR fuel rodlet, showing how the fission gas impacts the UO2 thermal conductivity. Furthermore, additional BISON simulations were conducted to demonstrate the impact of average grain size on both the fuel thermal conductivity and the fission gas release.
AB - Fission gas production and evolution significantly impact the fuel performance, causing swelling, a reduction in the thermal conductivity and fission gas release. However, typical empirical models of fuel properties treat each of these effects separately and uncoupled. Here, we couple a fission gas release model to a model of the impact of fission gas on the fuel thermal conductivity. To quantify the specific impact of grain boundary (GB) bubbles on the thermal conductivity, we use atomistic and mesoscale simulations. Atomistic molecular dynamic simulations were employed to determine the GB thermal resistance. These values were then used in mesoscale heat conduction simulations to develop a mechanistic expression for the effective GB thermal resistance of a GB containing gas bubbles, as a function of the percentage of the GB covered by fission gas. The coupled fission gas release and thermal conductivity model was implemented in Idaho National Laboratory's BISON fuel performance code to model the behavior of a 10-pellet LWR fuel rodlet, showing how the fission gas impacts the UO2 thermal conductivity. Furthermore, additional BISON simulations were conducted to demonstrate the impact of average grain size on both the fuel thermal conductivity and the fission gas release.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/84878304169
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/84878304169#tab=citedBy
U2 - 10.1016/j.jnucmat.2013.05.008
DO - 10.1016/j.jnucmat.2013.05.008
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84878304169
SN - 0022-3115
VL - 440
SP - 193
EP - 200
JO - Journal of Nuclear Materials
JF - Journal of Nuclear Materials
IS - 1-3
ER -