A Study of Prediction Model Improvement for Air-Oxidation Breakaway in a Postulated Spent Nuclear Fuel Pool Complete Loss of Coolant Accident

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an interesting paper that will attract attention of the journal audience. There are minor English grammar and style issues so proof-reading is needed prior to final submission. Otherwise, the manuscript is ready for publication. The only suggestion for authors is to consider expanding the abstract and conclusions to include the results and their brief discussion. As written, they have too limited connection to the paper.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Improving the air-oxidation breakaway kinetic model of Zr cladding is an important task in improving the safety of spent nuclear fuel and establishing a regulatory model.

However, we do not fully agree on the motivation for this study because there is insufficient evidence to judge whether the model using the fitting results using the authors' previous studies is superior to the fitting using the experimental values of previous studies.

However, we do not fully agree with the motive of this study because the quantitative analysis results of how the model using the Johnson-Mehl model presented an accurate model compared to the previous model was not sufficiently described in the paper.

Other than that, there are also minor improvements in the paper.

1. Where did f(\alpha) go when proceeded from equation (4) to (5)?

f(\alpha)=\frac{b}{k}t\times t^{n-1} and then represented by alpha?

 

2. "The newly proposed model adopted this phase transformation mechanism "

I don't think the specific mechanism of tetragonal-monoclinic ZrO2 phase transformation is proposed in the phase. Of course it will be structural transformation because chemical composition does not change, however, to talk about the mechanism, we need a description of how the phase transformation took place.

3. around and more than 1000^circ C -> around and higher than

4. main driving force to initiate the breakaway. -> main reason to initiate

5. In order to describe the phase stability according to the thickness, it is judged as the opinion that the phase transformation due to the misfit strain for Zr clad tube and ZrO2 is judged as the main factor. It looks like we need some analysis on this part.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I think authors replied the questions I raised properly.