Westinghouse Electric Company LLC

Milorad B Dzodzo

William A Byers

Zeses E Karoutas

Dmitry V Paramonov

Leo A Carrilho

Michael Y Young

The invention pertains to a nuclear fuel rod for a nuclear reactor. The fuel rod has a cladding. The cladding's external surface has a surface texture that includes a rib. The rib coils around the circumference of the cladding. The rib length forms a sequence of continuous rib loops uniformly spaced along an axial length of the cladding. The ratio of rib height to cladding diameter is greater than or equal to 0.0134 and less than or equal to 0.0268. The ratio of rib height to rib width is greater than or equal to 0.8 and less than or equal to 1.2. A pitch measured between adjacent rib loops is greater than or equal to 9&#xd7; rib height and less than or equal to 12&#xd7; rib height. The rib enhances fuel rod heat transfer in a region downstream of grid mixing vanes, where turbulence is dissipated.

Rib-type roughness design for improved heat transfer in PWR rod bundles

A crud-resistant nuclear fuel element cladding in which the axial locations that experience nucleate boiling during reactor full power operation are highly polished so that the maximum size of any surface defect on the highly polished surface is approximately 0.1 microns. The remainder of the cladding surface remains unpolished so that crud is more evenly redistributed over the entire fuel cladding surface to limit the thickness of the crud that is formed to less than 35 microns.

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Monroeville, PA, United States of America

Milorad B Dzodzo