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Photothermal microscopy applied to the characterization of UO2-Gd2O3 nuclear fuel pellets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 April 2013

Oscar Martínez ,
Facundo Zaldivar ,
Nélida Mingolo  and
Rodolfo Kempf
Oscar Martínez
Affiliation:
Fisica, FCEN, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, CABA, Argentina. Toket SRL, Buenos Aires, CABA, Argentina. CONICET, Buenos Aires, CABA, Argentina
Facundo Zaldivar
Affiliation:
Fisica, Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, CABA, Argentina.
Nélida Mingolo
Affiliation:
Fisica, Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, CABA, Argentina.
Rodolfo Kempf
Affiliation:
Unidad Actividad Combustibles Nucleares. División Caracterización, CNEA, San Martin, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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Abstract

The photothermal photodeflection technique is shown to provide information on the homogeneity of fuel pellets, pore distribution, clustering detection of pure urania and gadolinea and to provide a two-dimensional mapping of the thermal diffusivity correlated to the composition of the interdiffused Gadolinium and Uranium oxide. Histograms of the thermal diffusivity distribution become a reliable quantitative way of quantifying the degree of homogeneity and the width of the histogram can be used as a direct measure of the homogeneity. These quantitative measures of the homogeneity of the samples at microscopic levels provides a protocol that can be used as a reliable specification and quality control method for nuclear fuels, substituting with a single test a battery of expensive, time consuming and operator dependent techniques.

Keywords

nuclear materialsporositysintering
Type
Articles
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 1492: Symposium D/G – Materials for Sustainable Development—Challenges and Opportunities , 2013 , pp. 47 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2013 

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References

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