| Summary: | Summary: Fouling deposit on nuclear fuel cladding causes wick boiling and boron hideout, resulting in localized corrosion and power shift with great potential security and economic risks. Herein, a cost-effective time-saving adjustable reproduction method combining sol-gel with ceramic sintering is presented to enable wide coverage of fouling’s morphologies and microstructures. Based on fractal analysis, structurally self-similar fouling deposits from different reactors conform to proposed porosity-fractal dimension law under 3% relative error. Wick boiling and boron hideout numerical simulation based on fractal dimension is implemented to treat different morphologies and structures in a unified way. Cladding surface underneath fouling deposit has a maximum 9.243 K temperature increasement due to thermal resistance, and H3BO3 is concentrated 11.274 times by mean of wick boiling, causing Li2B4O7 precipitation under extreme conditions with low porosity and high heat flux. The insights in this study provide a precise approach for quantitative evaluation of localized corrosion and power shift.
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