Production and characterization of Cr-doped UO2 as an ATF by wet route (IONMAT project. Subtask 2.2)

Abstract

Among the current variety of materials comprising Accident-Tolerant Fuels (ATFs), Cr-doped UO2 is one of the shortest-term concepts, due to its improved properties with respect to standard UO2. Here, a set of Cr-doped UO2 pellets were prepared. Solid precursors were obtained by following a wet method based on co-precipitation of U and Cr in basic media. The quality of the co-precipitated solid (ADU-Cr) and the subsequent products (U3O8-Cr, UO2-Cr) was evaluated by Raman spectroscopy, XRD, SEM and BET. Then, sintered pellets were obtained as final fuel surrogates. They were also characterised in terms of grain size, density, morphology and Cr incorporation into the UO2 lattice, which turned out to be successful.