Calculating the radiological inventory that would be released from a fuel matrix, to evaluate the potential impact of failure, in the event of an accident breaching the fuel sheathing and containment vessels.
This project was completed recently for a nuclear organization and involved the following elements:
- Review of experimental data on radiological inventories in the grain boundaries available for "instant release"
- Fuel performance and radionuclide depletion decay data to determine the available inventories
- Thermodynamic database to determine the Phase A soluability of available radionuclides
- Determination of the Instant Release Fraction for defined fuel bundle
- The FEMAXI-VI to simulate fission gas release from CANDU fuel elements
- ORIGEN to determine and quantify the long-term decay products that would contribute to the Instant Release Fraction
- Collaborative work with the University of Ontario Institute of Technology to determine the thermodynamic properties of the radionuclides
- Practical determination of the Instant Release Fraction for CANDU fuel stored in a deep geological repository