Étude par calcul de structure électronique des dégâts d'irradiation dans le combustible nucléaire UO2 : comportement des défauts ponctuels et gaz de fission

摘要

Uranium dioxide (UO2) is worldwide the most widely used fuel in nuclear plants in the world and in particular in pressurized water reactors (PWR). In-pile the fission of uranium nuclei creates fission products and point defects in the fuel. The understanding of the evolution of these radiation damages requires a multi-scale modelling approach of the nuclear fuel, from the scale of the pellet to the atomic scale. We used an electronic structure calculation method based on the density functional theory (DFT) to model radiation damage in UO2 at the atomic scale. A Hubbard-type Coulomb interaction term is added to the standard DFT formalism to take into account the strong correlations of the 5f electrons in UO2. This method is used to study point defects with various charge states and the incorporation and diffusion of krypton in uranium dioxide. This study allowed us to obtain essential data for higher scale models but also to interpret experimental results. In parallel of this study, three ways to improve the state of the art of electronic structure calculations of UO2 have been explored : the consideration of the spin-orbit coupling neglected in current point defect calculations, the application of functionals allowing one to take into account the non-local interactions such as van der Waals interactions important for rare gases and the use of the Dynamical Mean Field Theory combined to the DFT method in order to take into account the dynamical effects in the 5f electron correlations.