Grand potential sintering simulations of doped UO2 accident-tolerant fuel concepts

Greenquist, Ian; Tonks, Michael; Cooper, Michael William Donald; Andersson, Anders David Ragnar; Zhang, Yongfeng

doi:10.1016/j.jnucmat.2020.152052

Grand potential sintering simulations of doped UO₂ accident-tolerant fuel concepts

Journal Article · Wed Feb 19 00:00:00 EST 2020 · Journal of Nuclear Materials

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnucmat.2020.152052· OSTI ID:1602741

Greenquist, Ian ^[1]; Tonks, Michael ^[2]; ^[3]; ^[3]; Zhang, Yongfeng ^[4]

Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park, PA (United States); Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL (United States)
Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States); Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States)

Chromium-doped UO is a widely-studied near-term deployable accident-tolerant fuel concept because it results in a dense, large-grain structure that increases the fuel resistance to densification, swelling, and fission gas release. A new charged-interstitial mechanism was recently proposed to describe the behavior of dopants like chromium in sintered UO₂. Based on that mechanism, manganese was suggested as an even stronger dopant than chromium. In the current work we use mesoscale sintering simulations in an effort to validate the new mechanism. We compare the relative behavior of Cr-doped and undoped UO₂ against experimental data in the literature. We also make predictions of the relative behavior of Mn-doped UO₂. Simulations are done using the phase field-based grand potential sintering model. Dopants have two effects on sintered UO₂. They marginally increase the densification rate and greatly increase the average grain size. Both of these effects are individually tested in small-scale simulations. Then large 3D sintering simulations are used to test the combined behavior of both effects. The results for the densification rate simulations are consistent with experiments for Cr-doped fuels. However, we note the grain growth rates are lower than what is found in the literature for Cr-doped fuels.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) Program; USDOE; USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA); USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)

Grant/Contract Number:: 89233218CNA000001

OSTI ID:: 1602741

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1776000

Report Number(s):: LA-UR--19-24050

Journal Information:: Journal of Nuclear Materials, Journal Name: Journal of Nuclear Materials Journal Issue: C Vol. 532; ISSN 0022-3115

Publisher:: ElsevierCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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