초록
As there has arisen a concern that failure of the high burnup fuel under the reactivity-insertion accident(RIA) may occur at the energy lower than the expected, fuel behavior under the rod ejection accident in a typical Westinghouse-designed 950 MWe PWR was analyzed by using the three dimensional nodal transient neutronics code, PANBOX2 and the transient fuel rod performance analysis code, FRAP-T6. Fuel failure criteria versus the burnup was conservatively derived taking into account available test data and the possible fuel failure mechanisms. The high burnup and longer cycle length fuel loading scheme of a peak rod turnup of 68 MWD/kgU was selected for the analysis. Except three dimensional core neutronics calculation, the analysis used the same core conditions and assumptions as the conventional zero dimensional analysis. Results of three dimensional analysis showed that the peak fuel enthalpy during the rod ejection accident is less than one third of that calculated by the conventional zero dimensional analysis methodology and the fraction of fuel failure in the core is less than 4 %. Therefore, it can be said that the current design limit of less than 10 percent fuel failure and maintaining the core coolable geometry would be adequately satisfied under the rod ejection accident, even though the conservative fuel failure criteria derived from the test data are applied.