Nuclear reactors are powered by radioactive uranium fuel pellets that are stacked together into so-called ‘fuel rods’. After about three years of service, these fuel rods are then considered ‘spent fuel’. Once this occurs, the spent fuel must be removed and disposed of, which is really storage. During storage, the outer surface of the pellets swell and spent fuel rods come into contact with the inner surface of the container (cladding; zircaloy is often the choice). The integrity of the storage of this spent fuel is dependent of the pellet-clad (P-C) interaction; however, little is known about what occurs at this interface. Therefore, this project is aimed at synthesizing a model of thorium (decayed pellet) and uranium (pellet) thin films on zircaloy (clad) to better understand/control this phenomenon. The approach of this project is to develop a reliable model that involves using a variety of simulants (cerium oxide) and depleted fuels (i.e., thorium and uranium) to generate thin film oxide on zircaloy. This work is in collaboration with computation modeling efforts to mimic the experimentally observed samples. For this talk, the development of Ce, Th, and U precursors will be presented, their conversion to thin films on zircaloy, and their relationship to ‘hot’ samples.<br/><br/><br/>Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-mission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC., a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.

Evaluating pellet-clad interactions using cerium oxide simulants and depleted thorium and uranium oxide thin films on zircaloy

255th National Meeting (2018)

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