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Development of an On-Line Fuel Failure Monitoring System For DEVELOPMENT OF AN ON-LINE FUEL FAILURE MONITORING SYSTEM FOR CANDU REACTORS DEVELOPPEMENT D'UN SYSTEME DE SURVEILLANCE EN LIGNE POUR DES RUPTURES DE GAINES DES REACTEURS CANDU A Thesis Submitted to the Division of Graduate Studies of the Royal Military College of Canada by Stephen Jason Livingstone, BSc, MSc Sub-Lieutenant In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy March 2012 ©This thesis may be used within the Department of National Defence but copyright for open publication remains the property of the author. Library and Archives Bibliotheque et Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-83407-7 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-83407-7 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Plnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distrbute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondares ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. Canada ROYAL MILITARY COLLEGE OF CANADA COLLEGE MILITAIRE ROYAL DU CANADA DIVISION OF GRADUATE STUDIES AND RESEARCH DIVISION DES ETUDES SUPERIEURES ET DE LA RECHERCHE This is to certify that the thesis prepared by / Ceci certifie que la these redigee par STEPHEN JASON LIVINGSTONE entitled / intitulee DEVELOPMENT OF AN ON-LINE FUEL FAILURE MONITORING SYSTEM FOR CANDU REACTORS DEVELOPPEMENT D'UN SYSTEME DE SURVEILLANCE EN LIGNE D'ECHEC DE CARBURANT POUR DES REACTEURS DE CANDU complies with the Royal Military College of Canada regulations and that it meets the accepted standards of the Graduate School with respect to quality, and, in the case of a doctoral thesis, originality, / satisfait aux reglements du College militaire royal du Canada et qu'elle respecte les normes acceptees par la Faculte des eludes superieures quant a la qualite et, dans le cas d*une these de doctorat, l'originalite, for the degree of/ pour le diplome de DOCTOR OF PHILOSPHY IN NUCLEAR ENGINEERING PHILOSOPHISE DOCTOR EN GENIE NUCLEAIRE u ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express thanks and gratitude to a number of people, and in particular my supervisor Prof. B. J. Lewis for enabling this work to become a success. The continued and amazing support of Dr. L.W. Dickson, Dr. R. Ham-Su, and AECL was instrumental in allowing me to complete this work. I must also thank my father for his tremendous efforts proofreading every part of this thesis. I am also indebted to Mark Floyd and Prof. W. Thompson for many insightful discussions and comments. I would further like to thank Dr. A. El-Jaby for his invaluable expertise and cooperation in many technical aspects of this work. The generosity of Bruce Power and OPG for supplying commercial reactor data for analysis made this work possible. Help was also gratefully received from fellow graduate students Dr. Michael Welland, Dr. Markus Piro, and Dr. Khaled Shaheen whenever needed. This work was supported by financial and in-kind contributions from Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, CANDU Owner's Group, and funds from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. in ABSTRACT Livingstone, Stephen; Ph.D. (Nucl. Eng.); Royal Military College of Canada; January 2012; Development of an On-Line Fuel Failure Monitoring System for CANDU Reactors; Supervisor Prof. Lewis, Brent. Although relatively rare in CANDU plants, fuel defects have always been an important operating concern for CANDU fuel operation and behaviour, and play a critical role in health, safety, and the economics of an operating reactor. A fuel defect occurs when a fuel element has a breach in its sheath resulting in fission product (FP) release and/or uranium fuel loss into the reactor primary heat transport system (PHTS). The unintended release of FP and fuel material into the PHTS creates elevated radiation fields and hazards for the reactor operator. The intent of this thesis is to develop an online real-time system that can analyse PHTS activity and infer information relating to otherwise unknown defect(s) in the reactor core. A MATLAB® based Graphical User Interface (GUI) programme called COLDD (CANDU On-Line Defected fuel Diagnostic) has been developed to provide detailed diagnostics of PHTS activities. COLDD is based on new techniques, a new empirical diffusion coefficient, new algorithms, and refinement of existing techniques. Several techniques are based on detailed mechanistic models that are presented in detail, while other techniques are based on empirical rules from experimental and commercial experience; the diversity of techniques are shown to be self-consistent. The techniques employed by COLDD are compared to techniques used internationally by other defected fuel diagnostic tools for non-CANDU type reactors. The ability for COLDD to perform successful defected fuel diagnostics is dependent on the quality of the data provided. A detailed sensitivity analysis is performed to determine key measurement parameters. Techniques are also developed to allow operators to perform robust error checking of data to ensure consistency. iv COLDD is validated against theoretical, experimental, and commercial reactor data, and shown to be stable and consistent in all cases. The plethora of analysis modes are shown to be self-consistent. The version of COLDD described in this thesis is considered a Beta version ready for testing at a commercial station, and for development to add and improve algorithms and the user interface. There are several possible improvements discussed, including gaps in defected fuel understanding that require further research. COLDD is highly stable and has been demonstrated to be effective; it is a new powerful tool in the arsenal of a reactor operator faced with defected fuel in core. Key words: Defected fuel, CANDU, Nuclear, Fission Product Release, Diagnostic. v RESUME Meme si les defaillances de combustible sont relativement rares pour les reacteurs CANDU modernes, elles ont toujours ete un sujet d'inquietude dans l'exploitation et le comportement du combustible CANDU, et representent un facteur critique pour la sante, la surete et Peconomique d'un reacteur en exploitation. Une defaillance du combustible se produit lorsque la gaine d'un element de combustible subit une rupture resultant en un relachement de produits de fission (PF) et/ou une perte de I'uranium du combustible dans le circuit primaire de caloportage (CPC). Le relachement non intentionnel de PF et de materiaux du combustible dans le CPC cree des champs de rayonnement eleves et des dangers pour Poperateur du reacteur. Le but de cette these est de developper un systeme en ligne et en temps reel pour l'analyse de l'activite du CPC et la deduction de F information sur des defaillances dans le coeur du reacteur qui ne seraient pas connues autrement. Un programme d'interface graphique-utilisateur (IGU) base sur MATLAB® et appele COLDD (« CANDU On-Line Defected fuel Diagnostic » - Diagnostic en ligne de combustible CANDU defectueux) a ete developpe afin de fournir des diagnostics detailles sur l'activite du CPC. COLDD se base sur de nouvelles techniques, un nouveau coefficient de diffusion empirique, de nouveaux algorithmes et des techniques existantes ameliorees. Plusieurs des techniques sont fondees sur des modeles mecaniques detailles, tandis que d'autres techniques se basent sur des regies empiriques obtenues de Fexperimentation et de F experience acquise de l'exploitation commerciale; la diversite de ces techniques est demontree comme etant self-consistante. Les techniques utilisees par COLDD sont comparees et mises en contraste avec des techniques utilisees dans le monde par d'autres outils de diagnostic de combustible defectueux pour des reacteurs de types autres que le CANDU. VI La facilite avec laquelle COLDD reussit a produire des diagnostics de combustibles defectueux depend de la qualite des donnees fournies. Une analyse detaillee de sensibilite est menee afin de determiner les parametres-clefs de mesure. On a aussi developpe des techniques pour permettre aux operateurs d'accomplir une verification rigoureuse de l'erreur pour s'assurer de la consistance des donnees. COLDD est valide a I'aide de donnees theoriques, experimentales et provenant de Fexploitation commerciale du reacteur, et ses resultats demontrent une stabilite et une consistance dans tous les cas. La surabondance des modes d'analyse montre que ceux-ci sont self-consistants. La version de COLDD decrite dans cette these est consideree comme une version « Beta » prete a etre mise a l'essai a une centrale commerciale et pouvant etre developpee davantage par 1'addition et 1'amelioration d'algorithmes et de l'interface avec l'utilisateur.
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