Publications associées à Cycle du combustible nucléaire

Atomic level insight into irradiation effects in nuclear fuel materials

Microstructural evolution during in-pile irradiation, radiation damage effects and fission products behavior in UO2 nuclear fuel are key issues in understanding and for the modeling of the performance as well as safety characteristics of nuclear fuels in t ...

EPFL2024

Innovative thermophysical characterization of an ATF composite cladding: the case of silicon carbide

Andrea Cavaliere

Nuclear power is a powerful technology that plays an important role in the fight against climate change, and research is continuously engaged in studies that could further improve its safety. After the Fukushima accident, Accident Tolerant Fuels research h ...

EPFL2024

Intra-pin Reaction Rate Measurements in the CROCUS Experimental Reactor

Andreas Pautz, Vincent Pierre Lamirand, Mathieu Hursin, Oskari Ville Pakari, Thomas Jean-François Ligonnet, Tom Mager

In response to the need for validating high-fidelity deterministic neutronics solvers capable of providing pin-resolved neutron flux distributions, intra-pin reaction rates measurements were performed in the CROCUS experimental reactor. A specially designe ...

2024

Flexible free-standing Fe-CoP-NAs/CC nanoarrays for high-performance full lithium-ion batteries

Kangning Zhao, Chen Huang

In this study, a flexible, free-standing Fe -doped CoP nanoarrays electrode for superior lithium -ion storage has been successfully fabricated. The electrode combines the advantages of a Fe -doping and a flexible carbon cloth (CC) support, resulting in a h ...

Academic Press Inc Elsevier Science2024

Design and operational guidelines of solar-driven catalytic conversion of CO2 and H2 to fuels

Sophia Haussener, Sha Li

Sunlight-powered catalytic conversion of CO2 and (green) H2 into fuels and chemicals via Sabatier and reverse water gas shift (RWGS) processes offers a promising solution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase renewable energy utilization. The suc ...

ELSEVIER SCI LTD2023

Monte Carlo analysis of BWR geometries using a cycle check-up methodology

Mathieu Hursin, Hakim Ferroukhi, Dimitri Rochman, Abdelhamid Dokhane, Alexander Vasiliev

Recent fuel anomalies at a Swiss power plant have motivated the development at PSI of the "Cycle Check-Up" (CHUP) methodology which consists in performing Monte Carlo transport calculations using nuclide compositions and thermal-hydraulic boundary conditio ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2023

Shear strength and shear stiffness analysis of compacted Wyoming-type bentonite

Alessio Ferrari

Wyoming-type bentonite is one of the materials to be used as part of the Engineered Barrier System (EBS) in deep geological disposal facilities for the safe disposal of spent nuclear fuel.In the KBS-3 type repository, the canisters containing the spent fue ...

ELSEVIER2023

Gamma-Blind Fast Neutron Detection for Spent Nuclear Fuel Characterization

Alexander Wolfertz

In this thesis, the development and testing of a system for measuring the axial distribution of fast neutron emission of spent nuclear fuel rods is presented. Emphasis is placed on the novel fast neutron detector used which can reliably work in extremely h ...

EPFL2023

Preliminary safety analysis of the TRANSMUTEX sub-critical reactor using the GeN-Foam multi-physics solver

Andreas Pautz, Carlo Fiorina, Thomas Arthur Louis Joseph Guilbaud

This work presents a preliminary safety analysis of the accelerator-driven system under development at TRANSMUTEX. It is a sub-critical lead-cooled fast reactor with a nominal power of 300 MWth having the following features: (1) an inert-matrix fuel; (2) a ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2023

Fast online diagnosis for solid oxide fuel cells: Optimisation of total harmonic distortion tool for real-system application and reactants starvation identification

Jan Van Herle, Hamza Moussaoui, Gerald Hammerschmid

This study investigates the potential application of total harmonic distortion (THD), as a fast online monitoring tool, to identify the early signs of failure modes in solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC). Indeed, the timely detection and identification of faults ...

ELSEVIER2023

Extension of the OFFBEAT fuel performance code to finite strains and validation against LOCA experiments

Andreas Pautz, Carlo Fiorina, Alessandro Scolaro, Edoardo Luciano Brunetto

The mechanical analysis of nuclear fuel behavior under base-irradiation conditions has traditionally been performed adopting the small-strain approximation. However, many cases of interest for fuel behavior involve the occurrence of large rod deformations ...

ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA2023

Validation of spent nuclear fuel decay heat calculations using Polaris, ORIGEN and CASMO5

Andreas Pautz, Dimitri Rochman, Stefano Caruso

Decay heat calculations of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) using Polaris and ORIGEN codes in the SCALE code sys-tem, and CASMO5 code, are validated using measurements from the Clab and GE-Morris facilities. Multiple hypothesis testing, relying on permutations and ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2022

Multi-physics modeling of VVERs with high fidelity high-resolution codes

Marianna Papadionysiou

The calculations performed for the design and operation of a Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) are a key factor for their safety analyses. The standard for the computational analysis of NPPs is the so called conventional approach, which relies on coarse mesh diffu ...

EPFL2022

Data-Driven Predictive Models: Calculational Bias in Characterization of Spent Nuclear Fuel

Characteristics of the spent nuclear fuel (SNF) are typically calculated, requiring validation a priori. The validation process relies on the difference between calculations and measurements, namely the bias. Usually, predicting the bias based on benchmark ...

EPFL2022

Delayed Hydride Cracking in Irradiated and Unirradiated Zircaloy-2 Cladding

Aaron William Colldeweih

Zirconium alloys used in the nuclear industry are exposed to extreme conditions undergoing high levels of irradiation damage and corrosion. Zircaloy-2 is used as nuclear fuel cladding in boiling water reactors and for the encapsulation of the spallation ta ...

EPFL2022

Comparison of JET-C DD neutron rates independently predicted by the ASCOT and TRANSP Monte Carlo heating codes

Henri Weisen

Simulations of the DD neutron rates predicted by the ASCOT and TRANSP Monte Carlo heating codes for a diverse set of JET-C (JET with carbon plasma facing components) plasmas are compared. A previous study (Weisen et al 2017 Nucl. Fusion 57 076029) of this ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2022

Unmoderated molten salt reactors design optimisation for power stability

Andreas Pautz, Axel Guy Marie Laureau, Andrea Bellè

The critical region of unmoderated molten salt reactors consists in a cavity filled with a liquid fuel. The lack of internal structure implies a complex flow structure of the circulating fuel salt. A preliminary core shape optimization has been performed d ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2022

Towards coupling conventional with high-fidelity fuel behavior analysis tools

Andreas Pautz, Carlo Fiorina, Alessandro Scolaro, Edoardo Luciano Brunetto

Multi-dimensional fuel performance codes have the potential to enhance the understanding of complex phenomena affecting fuel integrity, but their application is often limited by the high computational cost. Recognizing that many multi-dimensional aspects s ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2022

Growth and persistence of an aerobic microbial community in Wyoming bentonite MX-80 despite anoxic in-situ conditions

Rizlan Bernier-Latmani, Manon Frutschi, Niels Burzan, Roberta Murad Lima

Microbial activity has the potential to enhance the corrosion of high-level radioactive waste disposal canisters, which, in the proposed Swiss deep geological repository, will be embedded in bentonite and placed in the Opalinus Clay rock formation (OPA). T ...

Frontiers Media SA2022

Optimisation of used nuclear fuel canister loading using a neural network and genetic algorithm

Andreas Pautz, Hakim Ferroukhi, Dimitri Rochman, Alexander Vasiliev

This paper presents an approach for the optimisation of geological disposal canister loadings, combining high resolution simulations of used nuclear fuel characteristics with an articial neural network and a genetic algorithm. The used nuclear fuels (produ ...

SPRINGER LONDON LTD2021