MOX Fuel Performance Modelling of CANDU Fuel

Abstract

A proprietary mixed oxide (MOX) fuel performance modelling capability for ELESTRES (ELEment Simulation and sTRESses) code has been developed at Candu Energy. Since ELESTRES was primarily developed for UO₂ application, gaps were addressed to ensure that ELESTRES is fully qualified for MOX fuel design performance analysis. This paper describes an overview of proprietary code models developed for application to MOX fuel performance analysis. Code testing results have shown that the code predictions of the fuel performance parameters are reasonable, and the code predictions have good agreements with measurements.