Kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulation of fission product silver transport through TRISO fuel particle

A mesoscale kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) model developed to investigate the diffusion of silver through the pyrolytic carbon and silicon carbide containment layers of a TRISO fuel particle is described. The release of radioactive silver from TRISO particles has been studied for nearly three decades, yet the mechanisms governing silver transport are not fully understood. This model atomically resolves Ag, but provides a mesoscale medium of carbon and silicon carbide, which can include a variety of defects including grain boundaries, reflective interfaces, cracks, and radiation-induced cavities that can either accelerate silver diffusion or slow diffusion by acting as traps for silver. The key input parameters to the model (diffusion coefficients, trap binding energies, interface characteristics) are determined from available experimental data, or parametrically varied, until more precise values become available from lower length scale modeling or experiment. The predicted results, in terms of the time/temperature dependence of silver release during post-irradiation annealing and the variability of silver release from particle to particle have been compared to available experimental data from the German HTR Fuel Program (Gontard and Nabielek [1]) and Minato and co-workers (Minato et al. [2]).