Investigation of the diffusion of atomic fission products in UC by density functional calculations

Activation energies of U and C atoms self-diffusion in UC, as well as activation energies of hetero-diffusion of fission products (FPs) are investigated by first-principles calculations. According to a previous study which showed a likely U site occupation was favoured for all the FPs, their diffusion is restricted to the uranium sublattice of UC in the present study. In this framework, long-range displacements are only possible through a concerted mechanism with a surrounding uranium vacancy. Using the apparent formation energies of the uranium vacancy defect calculated in our previous study and the classical approach used in UO2 by Andersson et al., the activation energies of the main fission products in the various stoichiometric domains have been calculated. The results are compared to those obtained with the five frequency model applied to two representative fission products, Xe and Zr. Interestingly, despite strong differences of formalism, both models provided similar activation energies.