DOE OSTI2016
JASMINE, which is developed by China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGNPC), is a code for calculating thermal-mechanical response of PWR fuel rods. The code models many physical phenomena, including heat conduction through the fuel and cladding to the coolant, cladding elastic and plastic deformation, fuel elastic deformation, fuel swelling and densification,fuel-cladding mechanical interaction, fission gas release from the fuel, rod internal pressure, cladding oxidation and hydriding. Just as most fuel rod codes, JASMINE, which is a quasi-two dimensional code, includes a thermal module, a mechanical module, a fission gas release (FGR) module, and an internal pressure module. For thermal module, the time dependent thermal conduction equation of axisymmetric cylindrical geometry, Halden's fuel thermal conductivity, thermal conductivity integration method and multi-dimension Newton-Raphson procedure are used; for the mechanical module, generalized plane strain hypothesis, cladding-fuel axial lockup model, cladding thermal stress and transfer matrix method are applied; for fission gas release module, the time dependent diffusion equation for a spherical grain, Speight-Turnbull grain surface boundary condition, and Forsberg-Massih's method are used; for the internal pressure module, the ideal gas state equation is used. The code, which is on validation stage, will be used for fuel rod design of nuclear power plants in China in a near future. So far, the preliminary validation process for pellet centerline temperature and fission gas release, which is based on fuel rod test data in FUMEX-III project, has finished. According to the validation results, JASMINE has the ability to reasonably predicts fuel behavior and performance in-pile. JASMINE has good prediction in fuel temperature, and good prediction on FGR as a whole. However, for FGR in the range 1% to 15%, JASMINE over-predicts FGR; for other range, JASMINE underestimates FGR. (authors)
11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗