Mechanical behaviour of macro-dispersed inert matrix fuels

Processing of magnesia–pyrochlore composites for inert matrix materials

“…5(a), the microstructure throughout the mortar and pestle mixed pellets is characterized by agglomerates of MgO and Nd 2 Zr 2 O 7 surrounded by an interconnecting matrix of MgO and Nd 2 Zr 2 O 7 grains. The large agglomerates of MgO are detrimental to the corrosion resistance of the composite, however, since the MgO agglomerates will hydrate, swell, and cause cracks to form within the pellet eventually causing catastrophic failure [11]. This process also does not produce consistent microstructures, with different batches producing different agglomerate phases, sizes, and distributions.…”

Mechanical properties and XRD studies of silicon carbide inert matrix fuel fabricated by a low temperature polymer precursor route

“…The highest hardness achieved before and after PIP cycle was 3.5 and 5.6 GPa, which are lower than the reference MOX fuel and other simulated IMF pellets (5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15) [34,35]. A decreased hardness of fuel pellets is likely to reduce the mechanical interactions between pellet and cladding during operation and is therefore considered advantageous.…”

“…A wide selection of IMF candidates were examined in Ref. [35] giving fracture toughness results ranging between 1.2 and 2.5 MPa m 1/2 . In direct comparison to these literature values, the fracture toughness of the SiC IMF pellets fabricated within this study is significantly higher than simulated MOX fuel and the majority of other IMF options.…”

Reliability analysis of dispersion nuclear fuel elements

“…The European Unions and American are engaged in carrying out research on making use of dispersion fuel types [2,3] to dispose nuclear wastes.…”

“…Some researches [13,14] are conducted on fuel swelling: they adopted the spherical symmetry model without considering the mutual action among fuel particles, so the obtained matrix stresses are spherical symmetrical, which could not embody the actual stress state. Lately, in order to analyze the mutual action among the fuel particles more precisely, the analysis using FEM considering more actual particle distribution is presented [3]. However, since the amount of the fuel particles is very large and the fission course is quite complex, the computation veracity and effectiveness are far from meeting the needs of the actual application.…”