Coupled Monte Carlo-burnup and CFD analysis of coated UN and UC fuels in an HPLWR fuel assembly

Ceramic nuclear fuels may have potential benefits to be considered as nuclear fuels in future Supercritical Water Reactors (SCWR), they offer the advantage of high thermal conductivity and high-density values compared to uranium dioxide. In recent years, uranium nitride (UN) and uranium carbide (UC) are being considered as viable options for alternative nuclear fuels in SCWR, but an important issue is related to their chemical reactivity with water and nickel, which forces the use of coatings for fuel pellets, reducing heavy metal volume and reducing their thermal and neutronic performance. The main purpose of the study is the analysis of the burnup dependent performance of coated ceramic fuels in the SCWR compared with conventional UO2 fuel. Particularly, it focuses on the study of the fuel centerline temperature and the cladding surface temperature. Furthermore, the evolution of the neutron multiplication factor, the fissile inventory ratios and the main heavy isotopes composition along burnup are analyzed and compared to asses proliferation resistance issues. The use of UN fuel coated with Zirconium Carbide (ZrC) and UC fuel coated with Titanium Nitride (TiN) in the fuel assembly of the High-Performance Light Water Reactor is analyzed, and the results are compared with those of the conventional UO2 fuel. The comparative study was conducted for a hypothetic operation time of 540 days. Due to the large coolant density variation along with the active height of the fuel assembly, coupled calculations are performed using the Monte Carlo MCNP6 code and the CFD code ANSYS-CFX 19, taking into account the capabilities of CFD codes to describe the heat transfer mechanisms at supercritical conditions. The main results show significantly lower values of the centerline temperature distribution in UN_ZrC and UC_TiN fuels compared to UO2 fuel. The fuel burnup values obtained at the end of the 540 days are practically the same, a slightly higher burnup is obtained for UC_TiN fuel because of its lower amount of heavy metals in the initial composition. The evolution of the fissile inventory is practically the same for all the analyzed fuel options, around 65% of fissile inventory is still present in the core at EoC. Total plutonium production shows a decrease of 1.85% (UN-ZrC) and 4.53% (UC-TiN) with respect to UO2 fuel. Coated ceramic fuels show a slightly improved proliferation resistance compared with UO2 fuel, since a slightly smaller fraction of 239Pu is obtained in their compositions.