Irradiation Test and Performance Evaluation of N36 Characteristic Fuel

N36, a kind of advanced zirconium alloy developed independently in China, will be adopted as the cladding material of fuel assembly in HPR1000. In order to study the N36 alloy cladding performance in a reactor and verify the feasibility of using this alloy for cladding, the N36 characteristic fuel assembly with the N36 alloy cladding is designed and loaded in the reactor of Qinshan NPP Phase II for irradiation test. The pool side examination is performed at the end of each cycle to collect the in-core performance data of this fuel assembly. Then, the performance of N36 alloy cladding is analyzed and evaluated based on these data. For this sake, this study provides the irradiation test scheme, design and in-core performance collection method of the N36 characteristic fuel, and compares the in-core performance of N36 alloy and Zr-4 alloy.