International audienceThis work provides an illustration that density functional theory (DFT) + U calculations may quantitatively describe transport phenomena in uranium dioxide. Oxygen diffusion mechanisms are investigated using both ab initio calculations and experimental approaches mainly involving self-diffusion coefficient measurements. The dependences of the experimental data upon oxygen potential and sample impurity content demonstrate, by comparison with basic point defect and diffusion theory, that oxygen migration occurs via an interstitial mechanism. The temperature study provides an estimate of interstitial formation and migration energies which compare very favorably to energies calculated using the DFT+U approximation relating to the interstitialcy mechanism. Also, vacancy migration and Frenkel pair formation energies are shown to agree well with existing data

Over the last decade, a significant amount of work has been devoted to point defect behaviour in UO2 using approximations beyond density functional theory (DFT), in particular DFT + U and hybrid functionals for correlated electrons. We review the results of these studies from calculations of bulk UO2 properties to the more recent determination of activation energies for self-diffusion in UO2, as well as a comparison with their experimental counterparts. We also discuss the efficiency of the three known methods developed to circumvent the presence of metastable states, namely occupation matrix control, U-ramping and quasi-annealing.