Abstract:
In this paper, for the goal of sintering the uranium dioxide pellet in low temperature, UO
2 powder was surface pre-oxidation treated by thermal analyzer, then the transformation point, specific area, phase component and microstructure of powder were studied by specialized instruments. The results show that there is a little of U
3O
7 in uranium dioxide powders by pre-oxidation treatment at 240℃ for 8h in air, and UO
2 powders will transform into U
3O
8 at 382℃for 8h in air. The simulation sintering of UO
2+x pellet was launched by the thermal dilatometer. Shrinkage temperature of the uranium dioxide pellets after pre-oxidation treatment decreased from 1200 ℃ to 580 ℃, and the densification rate(Δ
L/
L) increased also from 1.52×10
-4/K to 3.08×10
-4/K. The mechanism of low temperature sintering to pre-oxidation UO
2+x pellets was explained by the simplified point defect model and densification equation. The UO
2+x diffusion coefficient is much higher than that of UO
2. The densification factor A is positive correlation to UO
2+x diffusion coefficient,and it could be expressed by aquadratic polynomial according to temperature T, which factor
a=16.23658,
b=0.04247,
c=-2.18802×10
-5.