| About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
2020 TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition
|
| Symposium
|
Thermal Transport in Crystalline and Non-crystalline Solids: Theory and Experiments
|
| Presentation Title |
The Degradation of the Thermal Conductivity of Oxide Nuclear Fuel |
| Author(s) |
Michael W. Cooper, Ben Liu, Chris Stanek, David Andersson |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Michael W. Cooper |
| Abstract Scope |
The power density of nuclear fuels creates large thermal gradients across the fuel pellet. This is exacerbated by the poor thermal conductivity of oxide fuel, in particular UO2. Given the importance of temperature in almost all fuel properties, the thermal conductivity tightly couples a range of material processes in nuclear fuel performance. The production of fission products, radiation damage, and O/M change during reactor operation leads to the degradation of the thermal conductivity. For example, degradation due to production of fission gas in the lattice increases the temperature of the pellet and enhances fission gas diffusion and release. In order to support understanding of these coupled behaviors classical MD simulations have been applied to investigate separate phonon scattering processes due to a variety of point defects and clusters created during burnup. The effect of spin-phonon scattering has been accounted for in postprocessing. Phonon scattering in MOX fuel is also investigated. |
| Proceedings Inclusion? |
Planned: Supplemental Proceedings volume |
| Keywords |
Aluminum, |