Mechanical Properties of Thoria, Urania and Their Mixture

Abstract

The new generation nuclear reactors are required to be safer and more economical. However, the properties of proposed, alternative fuels to urania, so-called accident tolerant nuclear fuels (ATF), are not very well known. The new experimental data for ATF need to be confirmed by simulations, which also allow for predictions of the properties at a very high temperature region where it is difficult to do measurements.The first principles calculations, using density functional method, are becoming very important in studying ATF since they have predictive power, but their application is only for a limited number of atoms. Therefore, complementary classical molecular dynamics calculations are used for larger systems. We compare mechanical properties of thoria, urania and thoria-urania 50% mixture as calculated by various methods with available experimental data.