Calculation of the thermodynamic functions of urania-gadolinia fuel

Journal Article · Mon May 01 04:00:00 EDT 1995 · Inorganic Materials

OSTI ID:171696

Godin, Yu G; Bulgakova, S V ^[1]

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1. Moscow Engineering Physics Inst. (Russian Federation)

Recently, increasing interest has been shown in the application of mixed urania-gadolinia nuclear fuel in reactors of the PWR type. It has been found that the addition of gadolinia, a burnable poison for neutrons, to urania permits one to increase the charge of fuel in a nuclear reactor, to level off the power produced along the cross section of the fissile core, and to increase the safety of the reactor. The addition of gadolinia changes many properties of the nuclear fuel, in particular, its thermodynamic properties, which are of great importance in predicting the behavior of the fuel during burning. Existing experimental results on the thermodynamic features of mixed urania-gadolinia fuels correspond to relatively narrow ranges of temperature and Gd{sub 2}O{sub 3} content. Therefore, it is of particular importance to develop a thermodynamic model that will permit one to calculate various thermodynamic parameters of the urania-gadolinia system over wide temperature and composition ranges. Thermodynamic models, based on statistical and chemical thermodynamic descriptions of the defect structure of solids, have been developed to date for UO{sub 2{plus_minus}x} and (U,Pu)O{sub 2{plus_minus}x} fuels. There is no information on thermodynamic models for urania-gadolinia mixed oxides.

• OSTI ID: 171696
• Journal Information: Inorganic Materials, Journal Name: Inorganic Materials Journal Issue: 5 Vol. 31; ISSN INOMAF; ISSN 0020-1685
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

05 NUCLEAR FUELS
40 CHEMISTRY
CRYSTAL DEFECTS
GADOLINIUM OXIDES
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
NUCLEAR FUELS
PWR TYPE REACTORS
THERMODYNAMIC PROPERTIES
URANIUM OXIDES