What is it about?
There is a modern tendency to depart from the traditional use of Uranium dioxyde as fuel in new designs of nuclear reactors. One of the reasons is safety, choosing more stable compouds of Uranium make the occurrence of severe accidents involving melting in the core less probable, and using compounds with a larger uranium density lead to core designs requiring less uranium to reach criticallity. A fuel element is a combination of the fissile core and a metallic cladding, which isolates the core form the reactor ambient. During operation the fuel element may be subject to temperature variations and this may result in thermal fatigue of the element.
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Why is it important?
The safe operation of a reactor requires knowing how the fuel element may fail and how it will evolve in service.
Perspectives
This is another result of my collaboration with Dr Nathahanael W S Morais, who was supervised by me in his PhD at USP. In this work we profited from the experience of my colleague, Prof. Eduardo F. Monlevade, professor for mechanical conformation in my Department.
Professor Claudio Geraldo Schön
Universidade de Sao Paulo Campus da Capital
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Thermal Fatigue of Zircaloy-4 Cladded U-7.5Nb-2.5Zr, Polytechnica, June 2023, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/s41050-023-00042-y.
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