A Rapid Sintering Method for Cerium Nitride Pellet: A Uranium Mononitride Surrogate

Uranium mononitride (UN) is a candidate fuel material for light water reactors with higher uranium (U) loading and thermal conductivity than dioxide (UO2). However, the sintering of UN pellets challenging as powder particles oxidize rapidly at high temperatures unless oxygen concentration extremely low. Oxidation during either reduces relative density sintered pellet or disintegrates to powder. To address this problem, present work developed rapid method producing highly densified surrogate minimal oxidation. Cerium nitride (CeN) used reduce radiation hazards. With custom-developed fast-heating system, process was completed within 150 s. The atmosphere flowing nitrogen (N2). CeN 95% theoretical (TD) higher. microstructure uniform 10–25 µm grain size demonstrated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) contained trivial levels oxides X-ray diffraction (XRD). resultant indicate that promising make equivalent made conventional methods, while also being more efficient in time costs.