An Ab-initio Calculation of the Actinides and the Lanthanides for a Simulated Uranium Metal Fuel

Nuclear metal fuel is widely used in a fast reactor due to its high thermal conductivity. Especially in the sodium-cooled fast reactor, uranium and zirconium based metal fuel is considered including transuranic elements (TRU) and rare earth (RE) elements. Thus, it is required to obtain basic material properties to evaluate a fuel performance in a reactor as well as a transportation and deposition. However, because the active TRU fuel contains various sensitive elements such as Pu which is deeply connected with a proliferation problem, it is very difficult to measure the properties of such U-based metal fuels. It is one of the solutions to use surrogates and to make a simulated fuel with them. For example, CeO2 is used to replace PuO2 due to its similar characteristics including its thermodynamical properties. An ab-initio calculation is used in this study to provide basic data for TRU, especially the distribution of electron which is fundamental data to determine an element's properties. Additionally, various lanthanides are also used to compare the elementary properties with TRUs