Accident analysis is an important tool for ensuring the adequacy and efficiency of the provision in the defence in depth concept to cope with challenges to plant safety. Accident analysis is the milestone of the demonstration that the plant is capable of meeting any prescribed limits for radioactive releases and any other acceptable limits for the safe operation of the plant. It is used, by designers, utilities and regulators, in a number of applications such as: (a) licensing of new plants, (b) modification of existing plants, (c) analysis of operational events, (d) development, improvement or justification of the plant operational limits and conditions, and (e) safety cases. According to the defence in depth concept, the fuel rod cladding constitutes the first containment barrier of the fission products. Therefore, related safety objectives and associated criteria are defined, in order to ensure, at least for normal operation and anticipated transients, the integrity of the cladding, and for accident conditions, acceptable radiological consequences with regard to the postulated frequency of the accident, as usually identified in the safety analysis reports. Therefore, computational analysis of fuel behaviour under steady state, transient and accident conditions constitutes a major link of the safety case in order to justify the design and the safety of the fuel assemblies, as far as all relevant phenomena are correctly addressed and modelled.This publication complements the IAEA Safety Report on Accident Analysis for Nuclear Power Plants (Safety Report Series No. 23) that provides practical guidance for establishing a set of conceptual and formal methods and practices for performing accident analysis.Computational analysis of the behaviour of nuclear fuel under transient and accident conditions, including normal operation (e.g. power ramp rates) is developed in this publication. For design basis accidents, depending on the type of influence on a fuel element, initiating events which may challenge fuel safety can, in general, be grouped into three basic categories: power excursion accident, power-cooling-mismatch accident and decrease of reactor coolant inventory.This publication has been aided by two important trends. First, the methods of accident analysis have been developed significantly in recent years for a better understanding of physical phenomena, computing capabilities and the integration of research results into code development and application. Second, extensive studies have been carried out to investigate the transient behaviour for postulated initiating events sequences in order to establish that the subsequent fuel conditions do not exceed allowable limits.More detailed information on available methods for analysis of fuel behaviour under accident conditions and provides practical guidance for use of the methods is provided in this publication. The publication is directed at analysts coordinating, performing or reviewing the analysis of fuel behaviour under accident conditions, both on the designer and utility as well as on the regulatory side.The IAEA officer responsible for this publication was S. Lee of the Division of Nuclear Installation Safety.
Allison et al. (Tue,) studied this question.