Experimental Determination of Metal Fuel Point Defect Parameters

Nuclear metallic fuels are one of many options for advanced nuclear fuel cycles because they provide dimensional stability, mechanical integrity, thermal efficiency, and irradiation resistance while the associated pyro-processing is technically relevant to concerns about proliferation and diversion of special nuclear materials. In this presentation we will discuss recent success that we have had in studying isochronal annealing of damage cascades in Pu and Pu(Ga) arising from the self-decay of Pu as well as the annealing characteristics of noninteracting point defect populations produced by ion accelerator irradiation. Comparisons of the annealing properties of these two populations of defects arising from very different source terms are enlightening and point to complex defect and mass transport properties in the plutonium specimens which we are only now starting to understand as a result of many follow-on studies. More importantly however, the success of these measurements points the way to obtaining important mass transport parameters for comparison with theoretical predictions or to use directly in existing and future materials modeling of radiation effects in nuclear metallic fuels. The way forward on such measurements and the requisite theory and modeling will be discussed