Poolside Examination Techniques Applied for Development of an Advanced PWR Fuel, PLUS7™

The poolside examination is demanded essentially for the development of an advanced fuel, because it provides data about in-reactor fuel behaviors as well as product performance. Therefore, all the results of examinations are transmitted back to design groups, and evaluated with the design models and codes applied new fuel development. In general, PSE is performed a variety of examinations in assembly and single rod state, such as visual inspection, fuel assembly length growth, bowing and twist, rod-to-rod spacing, spacer grid width, fuel rod diameter, and fuel rod oxide thickness at the end of each cycle of irradiation during plant outage periods. After the completion of fuel life, selected rods are extracted from the fuel assembly for individual fuel rod measurement. In this paper, the techniques of PSE applied an advanced pressurized water reactor fuel, PLUS7™ for Optimized Power Reactors (OPR 1000s) in Korea are described.