Sentences with phrase «zirconium cladding»

«This improves the safety margins at higher temperatures over traditional zirconium cladding used today.»

Without that leakage, the academy panel's own modeling predicted that the tops of the fuel assemblies would have been exposed by early April; as the water continued to evaporate, the odds of the assemblies» zirconium cladding catching fire would have skyrocketed.

Within three hours the nuclear fuel had boiled itself dry and then burst through its zirconium cladding before beginning to melt inside the reactor.

Worse: without cooling, the fuel rods continue to meltdown and may completely burst the zirconium cladding — a ceramic material — that holds them together.

That is also enough to meet almost half the fuel needs of the 104 U.S. reactors, once various plants located throughout the country shape this uranium into half - inch -(1.27 - centimeter --RRB- diameter black pellets and then form them into rods by coating the pellets with zirconium cladding.

A report to Congress in 2006 by a National Research Council panel investigating terrorist threats to spent fuel storage concluded that «under some conditions,» if a pool were partially or completely drained, that «could lead to a propagating zirconium cladding fire and the release of large quantities of radioactive materials to the environment.»

Heat from uncovered fuel could ignite the zirconium cladding, and the super-heated metal could then oxidize steam, releasing hydrogen and oxygen.

If the fuel rods are no longer being cooled — as has happened at all three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant operating at the time of the earthquake — then the zirconium cladding will swell and crack, releasing the uranium fuel pellets and fission byproducts, such as radioactive cesium and iodine, among others.

The 3.7 - meter - long nuclear fuel used at Fukushima is composed of uranium oxide pellets encased in a zirconium cladding.

Not exact matches

Enriched uranium is manufactured into fuel rods that are encased in metal cladding made of alloys such as zirconium.

And if the temperature continues to rise — and the reaction of zirconium and oxygen produces yet more heat — the cladding itself can spontaneously combust.

The fuel rods in most cases consist of uranium dioxide pellets encased in zirconium alloy tubes or cladding.

The question that should be asked is why zirconium is still used in cladding for nuclear fuel rods after being implicated in the Three Mile Island disaster.

That hydrogen buildup was the result of hot steam coming into contact with overheated nuclear fuel rods covered by a cladding of zirconium alloy, or «zircaloy» — the material used as fuel - rod cladding in all water - cooled nuclear reactors, which constitute more than 90 percent of the world's power reactors.

While the material used for testing was aluminum, the team plans to run similar tests with zirconium, a metal widely used for high - temperature reactor applications such as the cladding of nuclear fuel pellets.

These capabilities were established for fundamental studies on hydride formation and reorientation under stress with specific regard to zirconium - based nuclear fuel cladding.

Fuel rods became exposed and began to melt, while generating large amounts of hydrogen from the rapid oxidation of zirconium contained in the cladding surrounding the nuclear fuel.