Abstract
This contribution gives a review of the experimental results and accompanying theoretical considerations. The mechanisms considered for irradiation creep are: relaxation of elastic stresses by fission spikes, promotion of dislocation slide by thermal spikes, preferential, stress-orientated nucleation of dislocation loops and preferential growth of dislocation loops. A survey over the irradiation creep rates attributed to steady-state creep shows▪irr ~ σ ·F for oxide fuel in the stress and fission rate ranges of σ = 10–50 MN/m2 and F = 3 × 1012–1 × 1014 f/cm3 ·s at burnups <3%. There seems to be a continuous increase of the irradiation creep rate of oxide fuels with increasing temperature. However, that increase cannot be directly interpreted through a thermally activated process. It seems that the irradiation creep rate will also depend on fuel porosity, on plutonium distribution in mechanically blended UO2-PUO2, but not substantially on the plutonium content per se. Some results were already given for carbide and nitride fuels, which show the irradiation creep rate to be lower by about a factor of 10 than for oxide fuel under comparable conditions. Primary irradiation creep has been observed up to (3–5) × 1019 f/cm3 and could prevail up to 1 × 1020 f/cm3.
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