Zirconium - ab initio modelling of point defects diffusion

Zirconium is the main element of the cladding found in pressurized water reactors, under an alloy form. Under irradiation, the cladding elongate significantly, phenomena attributed to the vacancy dislocation loops growth in the basal planes of the hexagonal compact structure. The understanding of the atomic scale mechanisms originating this process motivated this work. Using the ab initio atomic modeling technique we studied the structure and mobility of point defects in Zirconium. This led us to find four interstitial point defects with formation energies in an interval of 0.11 eV. The migration paths study allowed the discovery of activation energies, used as entry parameters for a kinetic Monte Carlo code. This code was developed for calculating the diffusion coefficient of the interstitial point defect. Our results suggest a migration parallel to the basal plane twice as fast as one parallel to the c direction, with an activation energy of 0.08 eV, independent of the direction. The vacancy diffusion coefficient, estimated with a two-jump model, is also anisotropic, with a faster process in the basal planes than perpendicular to them. Hydrogen influence on the vacancy dislocation loops nucleation was also studied, due to recent experimental observations of cladding growth acceleration in the presence of this element