Initial Release of Nuclides from Spent PWR Fuels

The relationship between the leaching and gap inventory of spent fuel has been studied. When a specimen of J44H08 spent PWR fuel with 38 GWD/MTU has been leached in the synthetic granitic groundwater in Ar atmosphere, the released fraction of cesium was increased rapidly up to 0.7% at around 500 days and stayed below 0.8% until 3 years. This 0.7% of cesium might be released from the gap in this fuel. The measurement of gap inventory with C15I08 spent PWR fuel, having 35 GWD/MTU and 0.22% of fission gas release, was also determined near 0.6% for the cesium, which is a similar fraction of cesium released from the leaching experiment with J44H08 fuel. Its gap inventories of strontium and iodine were about 0.03 and less than 0.2% respectively. Respective fractions of cesium and strontium in grain boundary of C15I08 were 0.78, 0.09%.