Synchrotron characterization of nanograined UO₂ grain growth

Technical Report · Wed Sep 30 00:00:00 EDT 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1227386· OSTI ID:1227386

Mo, Kun ^[1]; Miao, Yinbin ^[1]; Yun, Di ^[1]; Jamison, Laura M. ^[1]; Lian, Jie ^[2]; Yao, Tiankei ^[2]

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1. Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
2. Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst., Troy, NY (United States)

This activity is supported by the US Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) Fuels Product Line (FPL) and aims at providing experimental data for the validation of the mesoscale simulation code MARMOT. MARMOT is a mesoscale multiphysics code that predicts the coevolution of microstructure and properties within reactor fuel during its lifetime in the reactor. It is an important component of the Moose-Bison-Marmot (MBM) code suite that has been developed by Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to enable next generation fuel performance modeling capability as part of the NEAMS Program FPL. In order to ensure the accuracy of the microstructure based materials models being developed within the MARMOT code, extensive validation efforts must be carried out. In this report, we summarize our preliminary synchrotron radiation experiments at APS to determine the grain size of nanograin UO₂. The methodology and experimental setup developed in this experiment can directly apply to the proposed in-situ grain growth measurements. The investigation of the grain growth kinetics was conducted based on isothermal annealing and grain growth characterization as functions of duration and temperature. The kinetic parameters such as activation energy for grain growth for UO₂ with different stoichiometry are obtained and compared with molecular dynamics (MD) simulations.

• Research Organization: Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-06CH11357
• OSTI ID: 1227386
• Report Number(s): ANL/NE-15/25; 121528; TRN: US1500911
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
URANIUM DIOXIDE
GRAIN SIZE
GRAIN GROWTH
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
SYNCHROTRON RADIATION
VALIDATION
MOLECULAR DYNAMICS METHOD
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
ACTIVATION ENERGY
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
ANNEALING
TIME DEPENDENCE
TEMPERATURE DEPENDENCE
KINETICS
STOICHIOMETRY
MICROSTRUCTURE