Calorimetric measurements on U19wt.%Pu6wt.%Zr

Metallic fuels have been recognized as one of the candidate driver fuel for liquid-metal cooled fast reactor. Enthalpy increments of U-19wt.%Pu-6wt.%Zr alloy were measured in the temperature range from 800 to 1300 K by employing the method of inverse drop calorimetry using high temperature differential calorimeter, Model HT-1500, supplied by SETARAM, France. Each alloy sample was dropped from the ambient to experimental temperature, between two α-alumina (SRM 720) reference samples supplied by NIST, USA. The calorimeter, the method of measurement and the procedure adopted for enthalpy increment measurements and analysis of the measured data to compute thermodynamic functions have been described elsewhere. The measured enthalpy increments were fitted to polynomial in temperature, by using the least squares method and using the constraint that ΔH^T_298K = 0 and Cp at 298 K was taken from literature