Recoil Based Fuel Breeding Fuel Structure
- R and D, LAVM LLC., Los Alamos, NM, 87544 (United States)
Nuclear transmutation reactions are based on the absorption of a smaller particle as neutron, proton, deuteron, alpha, etc. The resulting compound nucleus gets out of its initial lattice mainly by taking the recoil, also with help from its sudden change in chemical properties. The recoil implantation is used in correlation with thin and ultra thin materials mainly for producing radiopharmaceuticals and ultra-thin layer radioactive tracers. In nuclear reactors, the use of nano-particulate pellets could facilitate the recoil implantation for breeding, transmutation and partitioning purposes. Using enriched {sup 238}U or {sup 232}Th leads to {sup 239}Pu and {sup 233}U production while using other actinides as {sup 240}Pu, {sup 241}Am etc. leads to actinide burning. When such a lattice is immersed into a radiation resistant fluid (water, methanol, etc.), the recoiled product is transferred into the flowing fluid and removed from the hot area using a concentrator/purifier, preventing the occurrence of secondary transmutation reactions. The simulation of nuclear collision and energy transfer shows that the impacted nucleus recoils in the interstitial space creating a defect or lives small lattices. The defect diffuses, and if no recombination occurs it stops at the lattices boundaries. The nano-grains are coated in thin layer to get a hydrophilic shell to be washed by the collection liquid the particle is immersed in. The efficiency of collection depends on particle magnitude and nuclear reaction channel parameters. For {sup 239}Pu the direct recoil extraction rate is about 70% for {sup 238}UO{sub 2} grains of 5 nm diameters and is brought up to 95% by diffusion due to {sup 239}Neptunium incompatibility with Uranium dioxide lattice. Particles of 5 nm are hard to produce so a structure using particles of 100 nm have been tested. The particles were obtained by plasma sputtering in oxygen atmosphere. A novel effect as nano-cluster radiation damage robustness and cluster amplified defects rejection will be discussed. The advantage of the method and device is its ability of producing small amount of isotopic materials easy to separate, using the nuclear reactors, with higher yield than the accelerator based methods and requiring less chemistry. (author)
- Research Organization:
- Materials Research Society, 506 Keystone Drive, Warrendale, PA, 15086-7573 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 21091551
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Symposium Actinides 2008 - Basic Science, Applications and Technology, San Francisco, CA (United States), 24-28 Mar 2008; Other Information: Country of input: France; 15 refs.; Full text available at: http://www.mrs.org/s{sub m}rs/bin.asp?CID=12409&DID=212637&DOC=FILE.PDF; Related Information: In: Proceedings of the symposium Actinides 2008 - Basic Science, Applications and Technology, by Chung, B.; Thompson, J.; Shuh, D.; Albrecht-Schmitt, T.; Gouder, T. (eds.), v. 1104, [260] pages.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Changes in delta-Plutonium due to self-irradiation aging observed by Continuous in-situ X-ray Scattering
Density Changes in Plutonium Observed from Accelerated Aging using Pu-238 Enrichment