On the nuclear oxide fuel densification, swelling and thermal re-sintering

A method of calculating the fuel densification and swelling as a result of only the initial fuel porosity has been developed. Well-characterized UO 2 fuel pellets, from the Romanian CANDU type fuel fabrication route, were used to fit the specific pore volume distribution resulted from the sintering...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of nuclear materials Vol. 302; no. 2; pp. 109 - 124
Main Authors Paraschiv, M.C., Paraschiv, A., Grecu, V.V.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 2002
Elsevier
Subjects
Applied sciences
Energy
Exact sciences and technology
Fuels
Nuclear fuels
Preparation and processing of nuclear fuels
F0700
P1000
Density measurement
Swelling
Fuel densification
Oxides
Nuclear fuel
Uranium oxide
Resintering
Fuel pellet
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Summary:A method of calculating the fuel densification and swelling as a result of only the initial fuel porosity has been developed. Well-characterized UO 2 fuel pellets, from the Romanian CANDU type fuel fabrication route, were used to fit the specific pore volume distribution resulted from the sintering process to a lognormal distribution function and thermal re-sintering tests up to 280 h at 1700 °C were done to fit the coefficients of vacancies diffusion and the self-diffusion of uranium, required by the model. Careful analyses proved that the irradiation-induced resolution is strongly dependent of the hydrostatic pressure and a corrected formula has been proposed. Analyses of the time evolution of the pore size distribution during re-sintering tests and annealing tests similar with some as described in the open literature were also done.
ISSN:0022-3115
1873-4820
DOI:10.1016/S0022-3115(02)00797-3