Self-radiation damage in plutonium and uranium mixed dioxide

Annealing behavior of (Pu,Cm)O2 lattice and bulk expansion from self-irradiation damage

“…The results are shown in Fig. 4 as a function of annealing temperature, in comparison with those for (U,Pu)O 2 reported by Kato et al [9], PuO 2 by Turcotte and Chikalla [10], and single crystal UO 2 irradiated with a particles by Weber [11]. By the final annealing at 1429 K for 2 h, the lattice parameter recovered to 0.53978 nm, which was the same as the undamaged value of 0.53976 ± 0.00008 nm.…”

“…By the experimental evaluation of activation energies for the three stages, Weber [11] and Kato et al [9] interpreted that the stage I attributes to the anion Frenkel defect recovery (recombination and migration of interstitial oxygen to sink) and the stage II attributes to the cation Frenkel defect recovery (recombination and migration of cation vacancy to sink). The stage III recovery was conjectured by them to be due to the migration of atomic He trapped in vacancies to grain boundaries, followed by release and/or formation of bubbles as gaseous He.…”

Self-irradiation effects in dense and tailored porosity U1−yAmyO2−x (y=0.10; 0.15) compounds

“…Also, two close lifetime components in spectrum were related to the presence of defects that have large open volume [14]. In our materials, vacancies created by 237 Np recoiling nuclei should be lost by recombination with interstitial atoms, grain boundaries, impurities unless they are stabilized.…”

“…It leads to a significant self irradiation inducing structural defects formation and lattice parameter expansion [5][6][7][8]. Besides, swelling phenomenon at the macroscopic scale is also observed [4][5][6][7][8][9].…”

“…In this study, we proposed a new description of the pellet diameter variation using the exponential relations (1) and (2) which are similar to that currently used to describe the lattice parameter expansion [4][5][6][7]. …”