On Nanoceramic Fuel for Perspective Nuclear Reactors

In developing methods for designing reactor materials with reference to nuclear fuel, a task for micro-structural suppressing the processes of swelling, corrosion, and forming macroscopic defects (phase inclusions, pores, gaseous bubbles, cracks) in the fuel is formulated. For managing the defective structure of materials under irradiation, it is offered to choose their composition that fuel oxide ceramics have consisted of steady-state fractal tetrahedral clusters as the dense part of amorphous matrix (the nano-ceramic structure). In this connection, the search of multi-component systems providing this stable state can become a perspective direction for designing fuel with small swelling and corrosion factor. Such the materials will have high density of equilibrium vacancies that effectively absorb solid and gaseous fission products, and reduce the fuel swelling factor, physical, chemical, and thermal properties.