Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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A surrogate model for the helium production rate in fast reactor MOX fuels

  • D. Pizzocri (Politecnico di Milano, Department of Energy, Nuclear Engineering Division) ;
  • M.G. Katsampiris (Politecnico di Milano, Department of Energy, Nuclear Engineering Division) ;
  • L. Luzzi (Politecnico di Milano, Department of Energy, Nuclear Engineering Division) ;
  • A. Magni (Politecnico di Milano, Department of Energy, Nuclear Engineering Division) ;
  • G. Zullo (Politecnico di Milano, Department of Energy, Nuclear Engineering Division)
  • Received : 2023.01.26
  • Accepted : 2023.04.29
  • Published : 2023.08.25
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Abstract

Helium production in the nuclear fuel matrix during irradiation plays a critical role in the design and performance of Gen-IV reactor fuel, as it represents a life-limiting factor for the operation of fuel pins. In this work, a surrogate model for the helium production rate in fast reactor MOX fuels is developed, targeting its inclusion in engineering tools such as fuel performance codes. This surrogate model is based on synthetic datasets obtained via the SCIANTIX burnup module. Such datasets are generated using Latin hypercube sampling to cover the range of input parameters (e.g., fuel initial composition, fission rate density, and irradiation time) and exploiting the low computation requirement of the burnup module itself. The surrogate model is verified against the SCIANTIX burnup module results for helium production with satisfactory performance.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This work has received funding from the Euratom research and training programme 2019-2020 under grant agreement No. 945077 (PATRICIA Project).

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