CRUD is one of the major considerations from the perspective of operation and safety, especially in PWR nuclear power plants. CRUD, which consists of corrosion products in the reactor coolant system, is known to induce thermal resistance, distortion of power distribution, local corrosion, boron hide-out, etc. Some of these adverse effects imply that the CRUD can affect the plant economics and core integrity hindering the thermal limit of nuclear power plants. These kinds of challenges significantly highlight that the CRUD effect should be investigated to calculate accurate operational margin of nuclear power plants in operation as well as in development. Various academic efforts have been made to figure out the mechanical and chemistry characteristics related to the deposition mechanisms and implications, trying to reflect them on the nuclear power plants. A reliable database of CRUD is necessary for solutions since deposit experiments are too hard to generate quantitative results under high-pressure/high-temperature PWR operational conditions. Hence, this paper investigates the CRUD effects utilizing the thermal properties obtained from experiments under actual PWR conditions. In this method, the CRUD layer is arranged on the surface of the fuel clad composing an active core in a simulated PWR plant model. Based on the results, the guideline can be made to calculate the local heat flux on the nuclear fuel considering the high burn-up rate of the reactor core. Further research will be conducted for the better quality of the database, expanding the test conditions and results.
Jung et al. (Wed,) studied this question.