Sintering behavior of UO2-Er2O3 mixed fuel

Abstract

The incorporation of burnable neutron absorbers into nuclear fuel pellets is important regarding reactivity compensation, which enables longer fuel cycles. The dry mechanical blending route is the most attractive process to accomplish absorbers incorporation because of its simplicity. By using this route, the present work has investigated the sintering behavior of UO2Er2O3 mixed fuel. A comparison with UO2Gd2O3 sintering behavior was presented. The behavior of UO2Er2O3 fuel sintering was similar to that reported for UO2Gd2O3 fuel, e.g. two-stage sintering with two peaks in the shrinkage rate curves. The effect showed to be less pronounced for Er2O3. This was attributed to the characteristics of the Er2O3 powder particles used as raw-material, whose agglomerates can be more easily broken and thus better homogenized during the blending with UO2 powder. These results confirmed that sinterability depends directly on the quality of the homogenization of the powders, as seen previously. A second phase was experimentally detected in the UO2Er2O3 system, but its impact on the sintering behavior of this mixed fuel has not yet been clarified.