Diffusion of Fission Gas in Uranium Dioxide: A First-Principles Study
Uranium dioxide (UO2) is the typical fuel that is used in nuclear fission reactor, fission gas are produced during and after the reactor operation, and the fission gas have a significant impact on the performance of UO2 in reactor. In this paper, we investigated the effects of the fission gas on the performance of UO2 by using the first-principles calculation method based on the density functional theory. The results are that, the volume of UO2 increased when there is a fission gas atom enter in UO2 supercell; fission gas prefer to occupy the octahedral interstitial site over the uranium vacancy site and the oxygen vacancy site, and the oxygen vacancy site is the most difficult occupied site due to the formation of an oxygen vacancy is more difficult than that of the uranium vacancy; our results of the UO2 elastic constants are in good agreement with other simulation results and experimental data, and the fission gas atoms make the ductility of UO2 decreased. Our works may shed some light on the development of the UO2 fuel and the spent fuel reprocessing.