Abstract
Irradiation responses of U-Mo/Al dispersion fuel have been investigated by irradiation with 84 MeV Xe26+ ions. Dispersion fuels fabricated with uncoated and ZrN-coated fuel particles were irradiated to various doses at ∼350°C. The highest dose achieved was 2.9 × 1017 ions/cm2 (∼1200 displacement per atom (dpa)). Following the irradiation, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) experiments were carried out to characterize the microstructures of the irradiated samples. The post irradiation examinations (PIE) revealed that: (1) crystalline interdiffusion product (UMo)Alx developed at locations where no coating or compromised coating layer is present; (2) intact ZrN coating layers effectively blocked the interdiffusion between U-Mo and Al; (3) SEM-observable Xe bubbles distributed along grain/cell boundaries in U-Mo; and (4) gas bubble interlinkage was observed at a dose of 2.9 × 1017 ions/cm2.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 236-244 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Journal of Nuclear Materials |
| Volume | 464 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 6 2015 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
The submitted manuscript has been created by UChicago Argonne, LLC, Operator of Argonne National Laboratory (“Argonne”). Argonne, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science laboratory, is operated under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. The U.S. Government retains for itself, and others acting on its behalf, a paid-up nonexclusive, irrevocable worldwide license in said article to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies to the public, and perform publicly and display publicly, by or on behalf of the Government. The authors would like to thank KAERI for manufacturing the U–Mo powder and Mr. E. O’hare from ANL for fabricating the plates. The authors wish to thank Dr. Jerry Nolen, Dr. Shaofei Zhu, and Mr. Mathew Hendricks for their assistance in the ATLAS irradiation. This manuscript also benefited from the discussions with Dr. Jian Gan from Idaho National Laboratory and Dr. Jeff Rest (retired from ANL). The help of Carolyn Tomchik in editing the manuscript is gratefully acknowledged. This research used resources of ANL’s ATLAS facility, which is a DOE Office of Science User Facility. The electron microscopy was accomplished at Argonne National Laboratory at the IVEM-Tandem Facility, a U.S. Department of Energy Facility funded by the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy , operated under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357 by UChicago Argonne, LLC. This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Global Threat Reduction (NA-21), National Nuclear Security Administration , under Contract No. DE-AC-02-06CH11357 between UChicago Argonne, LLC and the Department of Energy . This work made use of the EPIC facility (NUANCE Center-Northwestern University), which has received support from the MRSEC program ( NSF DMR-1121262 ) at the Materials Research Center; the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center ( NSF EEC-0647560 ) at the International Institute for Nanotechnology; and the State of Illinois , through the International Institute for Nanotechnology .