Towards grain-scale modelling of the release of radioactive fission gas from oxide fuel. Part I: SCIANTIX

When assessing the radiological consequences of postulated accident scenarios, it is of primary interest to determine the amount of radioactive fission gas accumulated in the fuel rod free volume. The state-of-the-art semi-empirical approach (ANS 5.4–2010) is reviewed and compared with a mechanistic approach to evaluate the release of radioactive fission gases. At the intra-granular level, the diffusion-decay equation is handled by a spectral diffusion algorithm. At the inter-granular level, a mechanistic description of the grain boundary is considered: bubble growth and coalescence are treated as interrelated phenomena, resulting in the grain-boundary venting as the onset for the release from the fuel pellets. The outcome is a kinetic description of the release of radioactive fission gases, of interest when assessing normal and off-normal conditions. We implement the model in SCIANTIX and reproduce the release of short-lived fission gases, during the CONTACT 1 experiments. The results show a satisfactory agreement with the measurement and with the state-of-the-art methodology, demonstrating the model soundness. A second work will follow, providing integral fuel rod analysis by coupling the code SCIANTIX with the thermo-mechanical code TRANSURANUS.