Fuel Failures in the Dodewaard Boiling Water Reactor

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Abstract
Some fuel assemblies containing pins manufactured by British Nuclear Fuels Limited failed during irradiation in the Dodewaard Boiling Water Reactor. At discharge, the assemblies had accumulated a mean burnup of 14 870 MWd/Te(U) [14.87 MWd/kg(U)]. A selection of failed and unfailed pins from two of these assemblies was examined by the Central Electricity Generating Board to locate the primary failure sites and to identify the failure mechanism.Eddy-current signals not attributable to any visible feature were observed near the bottom grid site of the seven pins identified as failures. Metallographic examination of this region of four of these pins revealed a primary failure in the form of a penetrating crack in the cladding. It was inferred that the eddy-current signals from the remaining three failed pins originated at similar sites. The failure characteristics were identical to those known to have been caused by power ramps. Furthermore, increases in turbine off-gas and coolant iodine activities were coin...

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