A theoretical study of volatile fission products release from oxide fuels

Treating the average volume grains as thermodynamically closed subsystems, a method to evaluate the volatile fission products migration at the grain boundary and their release in the void volume of the fuel elements is proposed. The method considers the phenomena of the intergranular bubble growth and interlinkage, grain growth and grain boundary resolution. Analytical solutions of the diffusion problem associated with the volatile fission products behaviour taking into account their direct yield from fission and from precursors simultaneously with the diffusion and decay, irradiation induced resolution and fuel grain growth, during a time-step varying irradiation history have also been derived. The results are very accurate and point out the strong effect of the boundary condition changes on the volatile fission products behaviour when the simultaneous effects of the intergranular bubble coalescence, the precursors, the irradiation induced resolution and grain growth are considered. Comparative analyses versus other similar models of the diffusion of only stable gas species of fission products are also presented. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.