Comparison of two irradiation testing results of HTR-10 fuel spheres

In order to study the irradiation performance of fuel spheres for the 10MW high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTR-10), two in-pile irradiation tests were performed. The first irradiation test was performed in the Russian reactor IVV-2M from July 2000 to February 2003. The four irradiated fuel spheres were randomly taken from the first product batches. The central temperature of irradiated fuel spheres during this irradiation was kept between 950 and 1050°C. The maximum burnup of the irradiated spheres was 107,000MWd/tU and the maximum fast neutron fluence (E>0.1MeV) was 1.31×1025m−2. The release-to-birth rate ratios (R/B) of Kr and Xe fission products were 10−7 to 10−5. The second irradiation test was performed in HFR Petten (HFR-EU1) from September 29, 2006 to February 19, 2010. Experiment HFR-EU1 consisted of 3 German AVR pebbles and 2 INET pebbles. The two INET pebbles were randomly taken from the latest production batch. The surface temperature of pebble INET 2 during irradiation was approx. 940°C. The experiment was performed in two campaigns from 29 September 2006 to 24 February 2008 (12 reactor cycles of 28 days) and continued from 19 October 2009 to 19 February 2010 (4 reactor cycles). Up to end of irradiation, the experiment had accumulated 16 reactor cycles totaling 445 efpd and calculated burnup and maximum fast neutron fluence (E>0.1MeV) were 9.3% (pebble INET 1) and 11.6%FIMA (pebble INET 2) and about 4.95×1025m−2, respectively. At end of irradiation, based on 85mKr, R/B of approx. 8×10−8 was measured. The second irradiation test results are much better than the first. The irradiated sample manufacture technology and characterization, irradiation conditions and results of two irradiation tests are compared in detail in this paper.