Preliminary Results of the HFR-EU1 Fuel Irradiation of INET and AVR Pebbles in the HFR Petten

Abstract

The irradiation experiment HFR-EU1 in the HFR Petten is currently being conducted by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre – Institute for Energy (JRC-IE). The irradiation targets are 5 spherical High Temperature Reactor (HTR) fuel pebbles, 2 of INET production and 3 of former German production. Both types are made of TRISO coated particles and are tested for their potential for very high temperature performance and high burn-up. The irradiation started on 29 September 2006 and, by 24 February 2008, had accumulated 12 reactor cycles totaling 332.8 efpd and a calculated maximum burn-up of 8.9% FIMA (INET) and 11.2% FIMA (AVR). The objective of the HFR-EU1 test is to irradiate 5 HTR fuel pebbles at conditions beyond the characteristics of current HTR reactor designs with pebble bed cores, e.g. HTR-Modul, HTR-10 and PMBR. This should demonstrate that pebble bed HTRs are capable of enhanced performance in terms of sustainability (further increased power conversion efficiency, improved fuel use) and thus reduced waste production. The surface temperature of all pebbles was held constant during the irradiation, with the exception of HFR downtime and power transients. HFR-EU1 should demonstrate the feasibility of low coated particle failure fractions under normal operating conditions and more specifically: • high fuel surface temperature of 900°C (INET) and 950°C (AVR); • very high burn-up of 17% FIMA (INET) and 20% FIMA (AVR) which is significantly higher than the license limit of the HTR-Modul (approx. 8% FIMA); it will be explained in this paper why this objective had to be somewhat reduced due to excessive irradiation time requirements and technological difficulties. This paper provides the irradiation history of the experiment performed so far including data on fission gas release.