Behaviour of fission products under severe PWR accident conditions. The VERCORS experimental programme—Part 3: Release of low-volatile fission products and actinides Original Research Article

The VERCORS analytical programme consisted of a series of tests carried out on irradiated PWR fuel samples. The tests – funded jointly by EDF and IRSN – were carried out by the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique (CEA) at their Grenoble site. They were performed in a hot cell belonging to the Active Materials Analysis Laboratory (LAMA). The general outline of the programme was set out in a first article (of a series of 3), which described the different levels of fission products (FP) volatility and their characteristics. This led to a classification into five main categories of volatility and/or behaviour: (1) Volatile FP including fission gases, iodine, caesium, antimony, tellurium, cadmium, rubidium and silver; (2) Semi-volatile FP, a category made up of molybdenum, rhodium, barium, palladium and technetium; (3) Low-volatile FP comprising ruthenium, cerium, strontium, yttrium, europium, niobium and lanthanum with generally low but significant release; (4) Non-volatile FP including zirconium, neodymium and praseodymium; and lastly (5) Actinides which group together uranium, plutonium, neptunium, americium and curium. The specific behaviour of fission gases and volatile FP is dealt with in the second article, which also includes the specific characteristics of volatile FP regarding transport. The main variables (i.e. temperature, which is the main variable at least until loss of sample geometry, oxidising–reducing conditions, burn-up, interactions with the cladding and/or the structural components, the nature of the fuel, and finally the state of the fuel) affecting the kinetics and/or the released fraction of these same FP could also be identified.