Study and assessment of (FeCrAl) and (SiC) as candidate materials for accident tolerant fuel cladding in LWRs

Abstract

Iron-chromium-aluminum (FeCrAl) alloys and Silicon-carbide (SiC) are considered the best choice proposed as alternative cladding materials to replace Zirconium (Zr) alloys to improve the accidents tolerance in light water reactor (LWR) cladding which have much highly oxidation resistance in high-temperature steam than Zr alloys, which lead to maintaining high performance under normal operations and enhancing safety margins during severe accidents. In this work great results were showed in the thermo-physical properties for the candidate materials compared with zirconium.