2018/10/29 by E. Lawrence Bright, Eleanor Lawrence Bright, S. Rennie +16
Chemistry · Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Nuclear Materials and Properties #Nuclear reactor physics and engineering #Radioactive element chemistry and processing #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1810.12156
7 pages, 8 figures
arxiv created 2018/10/29 · openalex publication_date 2018/10/29 · arxiv updated 2018/10/30 · openalex created_date 2018/11/02 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Uranium mononitride, UN, is considered a potential accident tolerant fuel due to its high uranium density, high thermal conductivity, and high melting point. Compared with the relatively inert UO2, UN has a high reactivity in water, however, studies have not considered the significant effect of radiation, which is known to cause corrosion of UO2. This study uses 0.1 M H2O2 to simulate the effects of water radiolysis in order to compare the radiolytic corrosion rates of UO2, UN, and U2N3 thin films at room temperature. X-ray reflectivity was used to investigate the changes in film morphology as a function of H2O2 exposure time, allowing changes in film thickness and roughness to be observed on the Angstrom length-scale. Results showed significant differences between UO2, UN, and U2N3, with corrosion rates of 0.083(3), 0.020(4), and 0.47(8) A/s, respectively, showing that UN corrodes more slowly than UO2 in 0.1 M H2O2.