Atom transport properties and fission product behaviour

Coordinated by Matthias Krack, PSI (CH)

The atom transport properties of defects and fission products in UO2 and (U,Pu)O2 fuels will be investigated using various experimental and modelling methods. The major goal is to determine the defect formation and migration energies, as well as the incorporation and migration energies of gaseous and volatile fission products, which are input parameters for higher scale methods. To obtain these fuel properties with the required accuracy, a close interaction of experiments and modelling is crucial. In addition, new experimental devices will be developed to enable characterization of MOX fuels and reach the desired accuracy. Concerning the behaviour of fission gases, UO2 is studied as well as MOX to justify the approximations of using UO2 data for MOX that are currently made in the fuel performance codes and given the impossibility to apply some of the experimental techniques to MOX. In particular, no heavy ion implanter is available for MOX in Europe.