Quenching experiment on Cr-alloy-coated cladding for accident-tolerant fuel in water pool under low and high subcooling conditions

Abstract A transient pool boiling experiment was conducted to investigate the quenching performance of Cr-alloy-coated cladding in the simulated conditions of a loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA). Cr-alloy-coated cladding is a potential candidate for accident-tolerant fuel (ATF), which is developed to suppress hydrogen generation at high temperature in the event of an LOCA or beyond design basis accident. Cr-alloy-coated cladding and Zircaloy-4 cladding were used in the quenching experiment under low and high subcooling conditions, i.e., 0 °C and 50 °C. The thicknesses of the Cr-alloy-coated layer were 20 and 50 μm. Each cladding specimen was heated up to 600 °C in a furnace and quenched in a water pool at constant temperature. The quenching experiment showed the formation of film boiling and transition to nuclear boiling at the low subcooling temperature of 0 °C. No film boiling was observed at high subcooling at 50 °C. The effect of surface roughness was found to be insignificant for quenching performance. Rather, cladding oxidation, particularly for the Zircaloy-4 specimens, had a remarkable influence on the minimum film boiling temperature (MFBT) and quenching time. The Cr-alloy-coated cladding did not show the effect of surface oxidation as expected because of very low cladding oxidation. There is no significant difference in the quenching performance of the Zircaloy-4 cladding and the Cr-alloy-coated cladding at the high subcooling temperature of 50 °C. Furthermore, the Cr-alloy-coated cladding tends to decrease the quenching time with higher MFBT as the coating thickness decreases.

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