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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Nucl. Eng.
Sec. Nuclear Materials
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnuen.2025.1495360
This article is part of the Research Topic Structures and Properties of Fluorite-related Systems for Nuclear Applications View all 5 articles

Impact of alpha-damage and helium production on the Heat Capacity of actinides oxides

Provisionally accepted
Thierry Wiss Thierry Wiss 1*Dragos Staicu Dragos Staicu 1Rudy J.M. Konings Rudy J.M. Konings 1Alessandro Benedetti Alessandro Benedetti 1Jean-Yves Colle Jean-Yves Colle 1Vincenzo V.R. Rondinella Vincenzo V.R. Rondinella 1Emilio Andrea Maugeri Emilio Andrea Maugeri 2Zeynep Talip Zeynep Talip 2Arne Janssen Arne Janssen 3Oliver Dieste Oliver Dieste 4Luana Cognini Luana Cognini 4Emanuele De Bona Emanuele De Bona 5Gianguido Baldinozzi Gianguido Baldinozzi 6Christine Guéneau Christine Guéneau 7
  • 1 European Commission, Joint Research Centre (Germany), Karlsruhe, Germany
  • 2 Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), Villigen, Switzerland
  • 3 Carl Zeiss (Germany), Oberkochen, Germany
  • 4 European Commission, Luxembourg, Luxembourg
  • 5 University of Trento, Trento, Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, Italy
  • 6 University Paris Saclay, Centrale Supélec, Paris, France
  • 7 Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives (CEA), Paris, Île-de-France, France

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The heat capacity of alpha-damaged uranium, plutonium and americium mixed dioxides (Uu, Puv, Amw)O2±x samples was measured during thermal annealing. The excess of heat released was assessed and the recovery stages associated with various defects described by integrating results from Transmission Electron Microscopy, helium desorption spectroscopy, thermal diffusivity, and XRD annealing studies. It is shown that different defect annealing stages could be single out. It could also be evidenced that the excess of energy stored in defects tends to saturate after rather low damage levels but that, with increasing radiogenic helium production, another contribution of stored energy appears and that can be attributed to the formation of helium-defect complexes that cannot annihilate until higher temperatures are reached.

    Keywords: heat capacity, Alpha-damage, Actinide dioxide, Stored energy, defects, Helium

    Received: 12 Sep 2024; Accepted: 15 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Wiss, Staicu, Konings, Benedetti, Colle, Rondinella, Maugeri, Talip, Janssen, Dieste, Cognini, De Bona, Baldinozzi and Guéneau. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Thierry Wiss, European Commission, Joint Research Centre (Germany), Karlsruhe, Germany

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