Evaluation of need for integral fuel oxidation tests

This document establishes the need for an integral fuel oxidation test which can give confidence to the predictions made by the OXIDE computer code for fuel and core damage during water ingress events in the Modular High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor (MHTGR). This testing will provide clear engineering evidence to demonstrate that the core of the MHTGR can survive a moisture ingress incident with minimum investment risk and without danger to the reactor personnel or to the public. In particular, these tests will determine the degree of particle debonding and compact stack densification as a function of the fractional compact matrix burnoff. Also included in the document is a description of the proposed tests, and, a test matrix of the planned experiments. 3 refs., 1 fig., 1 tab