Spark plasma sintering and microstructural analysis of pure and Mo doped U3Si2 pellets

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  • Denise Adorno Lopes
  • Anna Benarosch
  • Simon Middleburgh
    Westinghouse Electric Sweden AB
  • Kyle D. Johnson
U3Si2 has been considered as an alternative fuel for Light Water Reactors (LWRs) within the Accident Tolerant Fuels (ATF) initiative, begun after the Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear accidents. Its main advantages are high thermal conductivity and high heavy metal density. Despite these benefits, U3Si2 presents an anisotropic crystallographic structure and low solubility of fission products, which can result in undesirable effects under irradiation conditions. In this paper, spark plasma sintering (SPS) of U3Si2 pellets is studied, with evaluation of the resulting microstructure. Additionally, exploiting the short sintering time in SPS, a molybdenum doped pellet was produced to investigate the early stages of the Mo-U3Si2 interaction, and analyze how this fission product is accommodated in the fuel matrix. The results show that pellets of U3Si2 with high density (>95% TD) can be obtained with SPS in the temperature range of 1200 degrees C-1300 degrees C. Moreover, the short time employed in this technique was found to generate a unique microstructure for this fuel, composed mainly of closed nano-pores (
Original languageUnknown
Pages (from-to)234-241
Number of pages8
JournalJournal of Nuclear Materials
Volume496
Early online date28 Sept 2017
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2017
Externally publishedYes
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