Traditionally, fuel performance codes are used by industry to simulate fuel behaviour under NOC. There has been a plethora of codes developed and qualified for specific nuclear fuel designs. Furthermore, the flexibility of Class I codes makes them conducive to knowledge gap identification, which may be helpful to provide guidance to future separate effects experiments.Ĭlass II codes are considered here as nuclear fuel performance and safety codes used specifically by industry and regulators to inform engineering design, qualification, safety, and licensing. The primary objective of nuclear fuel codes in Class I is to advance and explore various computational and predictive capabilities of nuclear fuel behaviour as a research and development tool, which may or may not be incorporated in a Class II toolset at a later time. While QA requirements are absolutely necessary to inform the decision making pertaining to safety and licensing, they are not conducive to software capability development or exploratory activities. A number of codes in Class II are used by industry and regulators to inform the design, operation, safety, and licensing of nuclear fuels, which requires a high degree of Quality Assurance (QA). This review paper will summarize previous experiences reported in the open literature in coupling thermodynamic calculations with nuclear fuel codes and applications, identify current challenges and limitations, and offer some perspectives for the community to consider moving forward.Ĭlass I codes used for research and development purposes are broadly aimed at capability development, phenomena exploration, knowledge gap identification, and interpretation of experimental findings. However, this progress has been accompanied by several challenges, including effective coupling of different types of physical phenomena in a practical manner and doing so with a reasonable increase in computational expense. Progress in expanding predictive capabilities have been reported, which also includes advances in thermodynamic database development to better capture irradiated fuel. There has been a number of reportings in the open literature of nuclear fuel codes being informed by thermodynamic calculations, ranging from the use of simple thermodynamic correlations to direct coupling of equilibrium thermodynamic software. A number of codes are used to predict various aspects of nuclear fuel performance and safety, ranging from conventional fuel performance codes to simulate normal operating conditions to integral engineering codes to simulate severe accident behaviour.
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