Fission-induced recrystallization effect on intergranular bubble-driven swelling in U-Mo fuel

Abstract

We have developed a mesoscale phase-field model for studying the effect of recrystallization on gas-bubble-driven swelling in irradiated U-Mo alloy fuel. The model can simulate the microstructural evolution of the intergranular gas bubbles on the grain boundaries as well as the recrystallization process. Our simulation results show that the intergranular gas-bubble-induced fuel swelling exhibits two stages: slow swelling kinetics before recrystallization and rapid swelling kinetics with recrystallization. We observe that the recrystallization can significantly expedite the formation and growth of gas bubbles at high fission densities. The reason is that the recrystallization process increases the nucleation probability of gas bubbles and reduces the diffusion time of fission gases from grain interior to grain boundaries by increasing the grain boundary area and decreasing the diffusion distance. The simulated gas bubble shape, size distribution, and density on the grain boundaries are consistent with experimental measurements. We investigate the effect of the recrystallization on the gas-bubble-driven fuel swelling in U-Mo through varying the initial grain size and grain aspect ratio. We conclude that the initial microstructure of fuel can be used to effectively control the recrystallization and therefore reduce the swelling in U-Mo fuel.