Redox state of plutonium in irradiated mixed oxide fuels

• Plutonium was approached by thermodynamics in heterogeneous (UO2–PuO2) and homogeneous (U,Pu)O2 fuels using the GEM code.
• Pu exists mainly as PuO2 in the case of separate phases, but can exist under its reduced forms (<15%) in solid solutions above 1000 K.
• These results are confirmed by EXAFS analysis.
• The Pu EXAFS signals show that Pu remains tetravalent in the solid solution and that trivalent Pu must be below 10%.

Nowadays, MOX fuels are used in about 20 nuclear power plants around the world. After irradiation, plutonium co-exists with uranium oxide. Due to the redox sensitive nature of UO2 other plutonium oxides than PuO2 potentially present in the fuel may interact with the matrix. The aim of this study is to determine which plutonium species are present in heterogeneous and homogeneous MOX. The results provided by X-ray Absorption Near Edge Spectroscopy (XANES) for non-irradiated as well as irradiated (center and periphery) homogeneous MOX fuel were published earlier and are completed by Extended X-ray Fine Structure (EXAFS) analysis in this work. The EXAFS signals have been extracted using the Athena code and the analyses were carried using Excure98 as performed earlier for an analogous element. EXAFS shows that plutonium redox state remains tetravalent in the solid solution and that the minor fraction of trivalent Pu must be below 10%. Independently, the study of homogeneous MOX was also approached by thermodynamics of solid solution of (U,Pu)O2. Such solid solutions were modeled using the Gibbs Energy Minimisation (GEM)-Selektor code (developed at LES, NES, PSI) supported by the literature data on such solid solutions. A comparative study was performed showing which plutonium oxides in their respective mole fractions are more likely to occur in (U,Pu)O2. In the modeling, these oxides were set as ideal and non-ideal solid solutions, as well as separate pure phases. Pu exists mainly as PuO2 in the case of separate phases, but can exist under its reduced forms, PuO1.61 and PuO1.5 in minor fraction i.e. ~15% in ideal solid solution (unlikely) and ~10% in non-ideal solid solution (likely) and at temperature around 1300 K. This combined thermodynamic and EXAFS studies confirm independently the results obtained so far by Pu XANES for the same MOX samples.