Identification of the Sintering Mechanism of Oxide Nuclear Fuel through the Analysis of Experimental Pore Size Distributions

The paper studies the sintering kinetics of pelletized oxide nuclear fuel in terms of various parameters (heating rate, sintering temperature, partial pressure of oxygen in sintering atmosphere). It considers calculated experimental pore size distributions in sintered fuel pellets. Study of the evolution of pore size distributions let us determined the physical mechanism of sintering of uranium dioxide. The sintering process is controlled by the mechanism of viscous flow under the influence of capillary forces and residual stresses.