INFLUENCE OF SILICONE CARBIDE ON THE REACTIVITY OF NUCLEAR FUELS USING CERIUM DIOXIDE AS A SURROGATE MATERIAL

摘要

The most researched material in nuclear power industry is uranium dioxide however due to strict safety and sanitary restrictions this material can be researched only in specialized research institutes and universities which have sufficient technological background. For this reason it can be suitable to find material which would show physical properties similar to UO_2 but would not suffer by the strict limitations in storage and handling. In this case much more workplaces could be incorporated in the material research and the list of investigated problems could be significantly enlarged. One of the possible substitutional materials is the cerium dioxide (CeO_2) which shows similar chemical and physical properties like UO_2 and in some cases shows also similar neutronic properties. The laboratory research was focused on comparing of the basic neutronic properties. For the comparison of nuclear properties the JANIS software was used as it contains cross section libraries of both materials. It will be shown that similarity of both materials is significant and in several cases application of cerium dioxide as alternative material is possible with sufficient accuracy. As an example of the use of CeO_2, research of influence of the SiC content on the reactivity of nuclear fuels is presented in this work.