About this Abstract |
Meeting |
2020 TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition
|
Symposium
|
Computational Materials Science and Engineering of Materials in Nuclear Reactors
|
Presentation Title |
Ab-initio Molecular Dynamics Simulations of bcc U and U-Zr Alloys |
Author(s) |
Benjamin W. Beeler, David Andersson, Yongfeng Zhang |
On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Benjamin W. Beeler |
Abstract Scope |
Uranium-zirconium (U-Zr) alloy fuels have a history of usage in sodium-cooled fast reactors and have recently regained interest due to the possibility of incorporating minor actinides into the fuel in order to reduce the quantity of long-lived radioisotopes generated as nuclear waste. Despite decades of irradiation experience on U-Zr alloy fuels, there still exists a relative dearth of fundamental property information. Under operation, the interior of the metallic fuel pin exists in the high-temperature body-centered cubic phase of U-Zr. This isotropic phase is particularly difficult to investigate, both experimentally and computationally, due to its low temperature mechanical instability. High performance computing resources are now allowing for the investigation of high temperature systems utilizing a density functional theory framework with minimal assumptions. In this work, the first ab initio molecular dynamics simulations are performed on body-centered cubic U and U-Zr alloys. |
Proceedings Inclusion? |
Planned: Supplemental Proceedings volume |