Interaction of dislocations in UO2 during high burn-up structure formation

Dislocation dynamics is used to investigate the distribution of dislocations in oxide nuclear fuel under irradiation using the values of dislocation density from experiments. A model is constructed to account for the effects of irradiation on dislocation movement and for the brittle behavior of the material. Results show that the ground state of interacting dislocations in UO2 during irradiation is a periodic structure with spacing between walls equal to 100–300 nm at experimental dislocation densities. These regions adorned by dislocation walls are called sub-grains and represent the result of polygonization. The threshold of polygonization is shown to depend on the fluctuations of the stress field produced by interaction of many dislocations. These fluctuations reach a critical value when a critical dislocation density is reached (∼4 × 1014 m−2). The calculated value matches experimental data on dislocation density measurement of irradiated uranium dioxide at burn-up corresponding to the formation of high burn-up structure.