Post irradiation examination of thermal reactor fuels

The post irradiation examination (PIE) facility at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) has been in operation for more than three decades. Over these years this facility has been utilized for examination of experimental fuel pins and fuels from commercial power reactors operating in India. In a program to assess the performance of (U,Pu)O2 MOX fuel prior to its introduction in commercial reactors, three experimental MOX fuel clusters irradiated in the pressurized water loop (PWL) of CIRUS up to burnup of 16 000 MWd/tU were examined. Fission gas release from these pins was measured by puncture test. Some of these fuel pins in the cluster contained controlled porosity pellets, low temperature sintered (LTS) pellets, large grain size pellets and annular pellets. PIE has also been carried out on natural UO2 fuel bundles from Indian PHWRs, which included two high burnup (∼15 000 MWd/tU) bundles. Salient investigations carried out consisted of visual examination, leak testing, axial gamma scanning, fission gas analysis, microstructural examination of fuel and cladding, β, γ autoradiography of the fuel cross-section and fuel central temperature estimation from restructuring. A ThO2 fuel bundle irradiated in Kakrapar Atomic Power Station (KAPS) up to a nominal fuel burnup of ∼11 000 MWd/tTh was also examined to evaluate its in-pile performance. The performance of the BWR fuel pins of Tarapur Atomic Power Stations (TAPS) was earlier assessed by carrying out PIE on 18 fuel elements selected from eight fuel assemblies irradiated in the two reactors. The burnup of these fuel elements varied from 5000 to 29 000 MWd/tU. This paper provides a brief review of some of the fuels examined and the results obtained on the performance of natural UO2, enriched UO2, MOX, and ThO2 fuels.