The modeling and simulation of the thermal conductivity of irradiated U-Mo dispersion fuel: Estimation of the thermal conductivity of the interaction layer

Abstract

U-Mo dispersion-type fuel is a potential candidate fuel for research and test reactors owing to the relatively stable irradiation performance of U-Mo fuel in comparison with other metallic fuels. However, U-Mo dispersion fuel shows high growth of interaction layers at high burnup irradiation. Although the thermal conductivity of the interaction layer is one of the critical parameters for evaluating U-Mo fuel performance, there have been no studies on the thermal conductivity of the as-irradiated interaction layers based on experimentally measured data. In this study, the thermal conductivities of the as-irradiated interaction layer were estimated using finite element analysis simulation and analytical modeling from the reported thermal conductivities of the fuel meat segments irradiated up to two different fission densities. The thermal conductivities of as-irradiated interaction layer predicted by the analytical modeling and the finite element simulation showed a good agreement when they were estimated by the analytic models considering the interconnected microstructure of the Al matrix.