The burnup dependence of light water reactor spent fuel oxidation

Abstract

Over the temperature range of interest for dry storage or for placement of spent fuel in a permanent repository under the conditions now being considered, UO{sub 2} is thermodynamically unstable with respect to oxidation to higher oxides. The multiple valence states of uranium allow for the accommodation of interstitial oxygen atoms in the fuel matrix. A variety of stoichiometric and nonstoichiometric phases is therefore possible as the fuel oxidizers from UO{sub 2} to higher oxides. The oxidation of UO{sub 2} has been studied extensively for over 40 years. It has been shown that spent fuel and unirradiated UO{sub 2} oxidize via different mechanisms and at different rates. The oxidation of LWR spent fuel from UO{sub 2} to UO{sub 2.4} was studied previously and is reasonably well understood. The study presented here was initiated to determine the mechanism and rate of oxidation from UO{sub 2.4} to higher oxides. During the early stages of this work, a large variability in the oxidation behavior of samples oxidized under nearly identical conditions was found. Based on previous work on the effect of dopants on UO{sub 2} oxidation and this initial variability, it was hypothesized that the substitution of fission product and actinide impurities for uranium atoms in the spent fuel matrix was the cause of the variable oxidation behavior. Since the impurity concentration is roughly proportional to the burnup of a specimen, the oxidation behavior of spent fuel was expected to be a function of both temperature and burnup. This report (1) summarizes the previous oxidation work for both unirradiated UO{sub 2} and spent fuel (Section 2.2) and presents the theoretical basis for the burnup (i.e., impurity concentration) dependence of the rate of oxidation (Sections 2.3, 2.4, and 2.5), (2) describes the experimental approach (Section 3) and results (Section 4) for the current oxidation tests on spent fuel, and (3) establishes a simple model to determine the activation energies associated with spent fuel oxidation (Section 5).