Open porosity fission gas release model applied to nuclear fuels

Abstract: Nitride fuels have gained a new interest in the last few years as both a candidate for GEN IV reactors and as accident tolerant fuels for current light water reactors. They however are decades behind oxide fuels when it comes to qualication and development of tools to assess their performances. In this thesis, such a tool is developed. The fuel performance codeTRANSURANUS, which has very good results with oxide fuels, is extended to handle nitride fuels. The relevant thermo-mechanical properties are implemented and fuel type dependent modules are updated. Their limitations and discrepancies are discussed. A particular attention is brought to the athermal ssion gas release, and a new model based on the open fabrication porosity is developed and added to the code, as a starting point toward a mechanistic model. It works well on oxide fuels, but its eciency is harder to evaluate for nitride fuels, due to large uncertainties on many key correlations such as the thermal conductivity and the eective diusion coecient of gas atoms. Recommendations are made to solve the most important problems.