Swelling due to fission products and additives dissolved within the uranium dioxide lattice

Simulations using empirical inter-atomic potentials have been used to predict the change in volume of the uranium dioxide lattice due to the accommodation of soluble fuel additives and fission products. The incorporation of divalent, trivalent and tetravalent cations are considered. The change in accommodation mechanism for aliovalent cations between UO2 and UO2+x gives rise to markedly different defect volumes. Experimental data is in good agreement with the predictions made in this work, particularly swelling as a function of dopant concentration under different conditions. The predicted defect volumes have been combined to predict the change in lattice volume with burnup (fission product inventory) due to incorporation of these soluble species, which agrees well with swelling data from irradiated fuel. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.