Quantitative comparability of heavy ion and in-pile irradiations on UMo fuel systems

To verify the calculations, a comparison of thicknesses and growth dynamics of out-of-pile produced interdiffusion layers (IDL) with predictions based on in-pile data has been made. The IDL is mainly composed of UAlx and forms during irradiation at the UMo-Al-interface. The observed thicknesses match within 10%, which is well inside the uncertainties of both methods. This demonstrates the applicability of the presented conversion approach as well as the reliability of heavy ion irradiations. The data from two I-127 irradiation experiments furthermore support the current understanding of the Arrhenius-like in-pile IDL growth, i. e. its forth-root dependency on fission rate (or ion flux), the square-root dependency on the irradiation time and the exponential temperature dependency.