Thermomechanics of candidate coatings for advanced gas reactor fuels

Nosek, Alois; Conzen, J.; Doescher, Heather; Martin, Carl J.; Blanchard, James P.

doi:10.1016/j.jnucmat.2007.05.014

Cited by 20 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Thus, ZrC has an attractive potential in rocket/SCRAM jet engines and hypersonic spacecraft, where lower density and higher temperature load bearing capability are the most important requirements. [7] In addition, ZrC is one of the promising inert matrix materials in nuclear reactor applications according to the framework of the generation-IV international project, [8,9] since it has a remarkably low neutron absorption cross-section and high resistance to the corrosion of nuclear fission products. [10,11] On account of these extraordinary properties of ZrC used in the extreme environment, several studies have already been conducted.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mechanical, electronic, and thermodynamic properties of zirconium carbide from first-principles calculations

Yang

Zheng

et al. 2015

Chinese Phys. B

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Mechanical, electronic, and thermodynamic properties of zirconium carbide have been systematically studied using the ab initio calculations. The calculated equilibrium lattice parameter, bulk modulus, and elastic constants are all well consistent with the experimental data. The electronic band structure indicates that the mixture of C 2p and Zr 4d and 4p orbitals around the Fermi level makes a large covalent contribution to the chemical bonds between the C and Zr atoms. The Bader charge analysis suggests that there are about 1.71 electrons transferred from each Zr atom to its nearest C atom. Therefore, the Zr–C bond displays a mixed ionic/covalent character. The calculated phonon dispersions of ZrC are stable, coinciding with the experimental measurement. A drastic expansion in the volume of ZrC is seen with increasing temperature, while the bulk modulus decreases linearly. Based on the calculated phonon dispersion curves and within the quasi-harmonic approximation, the temperature dependence of the heat capacities is obtained, which gives a good description compared with the available experimental data.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mechanical, electronic, and thermodynamic properties of zirconium carbide from first-principles calculations

Yang

Zheng

et al. 2015

Chinese Phys. B

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“…This is especially important in Pu kernels, where penetration of Pd-Si phases into the SiC layer could be significant in relatively short time scales [58,79,80]. In this sense, Nosek et al [49] have shown that alternative coatings such as TiC or ZrC develop 30% less tangential stresses than SiC while being resistant to chemical attack by metallic fission products. However, these studies lack from sufficient material property irradiation data and are still research concepts.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

TRISO-fuel element thermo-mechanical performance modeling for the hybrid LIFE engine with Pu fuel blanket

DeMange

Marian

Caro

et al. 2010

Journal of Nuclear Materials

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a b s t r a c tA TRISO-coated fuel thermo-mechanical performance study is performed for the fusion-fission hybrid Laser Inertial Fusion Engine (LIFE) to test the viability of TRISO particles to achieve ultra-high burn-up of Pu or transuranic spent nuclear fuel blankets. Our methodology includes full elastic anisotropy, time and temperature varying material properties, and multilayer capabilities. In order to achieve fast fluences up to 30 Â 10 25 n m À2 (E > 0.18 MeV), judicious extrapolations across several orders of magnitude of existing material databases have been carried out. The results of our study indicate that failure of the pyrolytic carbon (PyC) layers occurs within the first 2 years of operation. The particles then behave as a single-SiC-layer particle and the SiC layer maintains reasonably-low tensile stresses until the end-oflife. It is also found that the PyC creep constant, K, has a striking influence on the fuel performance of TRISO-coated particles, whose stresses scale almost inversely proportional to K. Conversely, varying the geometry of the TRISO-coated fuel particles results in little differences in terms of fuel performance.Ó 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. MotivationThe hybrid version of Laser Inertial Fusion Engine (LIFE) provides an attractive pathway to burn fissile materials such as excess weapons-grade Pu (WG-Pu) or transuranics from processed spent nuclear fuel, which can be burnt up to 99% fraction of initial metal atoms (FIMA) in less than a decade of operation [1]. The LIFE concept being pursued at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) consists of a point source of 14-MeV neutrons produced by an inertial-confinement fusion engine enveloped by a Be neutron multiplier and a sub-critical fuel blanket. A schematic view of the LIFE engine configuration is shown in Fig. 1. Details about the geometry and the neutronic and thermal-hydraulic performance of the reactor have been given by Abbott et al. [2,3].The type of fuel to be used in the hybrid LIFE engine is still open to debate, including whether it should be in a liquid or solid form. The nominal engine design calls for 2-cm-diameter graphite pebbles containing %1-mm-diameter TRISO (TRI-structural ISOtropic) fuel particles suspended in liquid Li 2 BeF 4 ('flibe') [2]. A TRISO particle consists of an internal fuel kernel surrounded by a low-density pyrolytic carbon (PyC) buffer layer to moderate fission product recoils. The buffer layer is coated successively by an inner high-density PyC layer (iPyC), a thin SiC film, and an outer PyC (oPyC). The configuration of a TRISO particle, with its constituent layers is shown in Fig. 2. The preliminary fuel composition for the WG-Pu engine consists of 20% of Pu oxycarbide (PuCO) embedded in a ZrC matrix (80%). The main objective of this paper is to model TRISO-coated fuel particles under LIFE's conditions using the state-of-the-art in fuel performance modeling, and assess the feasibility of TRISO-coated fuel for LIFE's WG-Pu engine. Next, we review the TRISO-coated fuel perfor...

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“…ZrC is an important far-infrared ceramic material [7] and is considered to be one of the promising inert matrix materials in high temperature nuclear reactors [8][9][10] due to its small neutron absorption crosssection [11,12]. ZrC also shows potential applications as coating layer for nuclear reactor fuel particles [13,14].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

One-pot syntheses and characterization of zirconium carbide microspheres by carbon microencapsulation

Huang

Kang

et al. 2015

Ceramics International

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Thermomechanics of candidate coatings for advanced gas reactor fuels

Cited by 20 publications

References 11 publications

Mechanical, electronic, and thermodynamic properties of zirconium carbide from first-principles calculations

Mechanical, electronic, and thermodynamic properties of zirconium carbide from first-principles calculations

TRISO-fuel element thermo-mechanical performance modeling for the hybrid LIFE engine with Pu fuel blanket

One-pot syntheses and characterization of zirconium carbide microspheres by carbon microencapsulation

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