| About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
2020 TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition
|
| Symposium
|
Accelerated Materials Evaluation for Nuclear Applications Utilizing Irradiation and Integrated Modeling
|
| Presentation Title |
Synthesis of Intermetallic UZr2+x and Its Phase Transformation |
| Author(s) |
Tiankai Yao, Michael T. Benson, Jason Harp, Lingfeng He, Jian Gan |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Tiankai Yao |
| Abstract Scope |
UZr2+x (where x=0, 0.3, 0.6) is an intermetallic compound in the U-Zr system. Its significance grows with the rekindled research interest on U-Zr based metallic nuclear fuels for next generation fast reactors. As part of the Thermal Energy Transport under Irradiation (TETI) EFRC, INL team revisited the synthesis of UZr2+x by arc melting alloys and studying the phase transformation of these intermetallic compounds. The alloys were heat treated by different combinations of annealing and quenching. Theoretically, UZr2+x crystalizes in hexagonal structure (delta phase) at room temperature and is a cubic structure (gamma phase) at high temperature. However, a transformation from delta to gamma phase was triggered by ion irradiation even significantly below the phase transformation temperature. Our results suggest that the UZr2+x phase performs as gamma phase with isotopic properties due to the body centered cubic crystal structure regardless of irradiation temperatures inside a reactor. |
| Proceedings Inclusion? |
Undecided |