Ultrafast diffusion of overpressurized gas filled nanobubbles in UO2

A Antropov and V Stegailov, JOURNAL OF NUCLEAR MATERIALS, 551, 152942 (2021).

DOI: 10.1016/j.jnucmat.2021.152942

Molecular dynamics modeling of diffusion of xenon nanobubbles in UO2 is carried out in this work in a wide range of gas concentrations. For small overpressurized nanobubbles emitted interstitials gather in a cluster near the bubble that significantly accelerates bubble diffusion and lowers its activation energy. This new diffusion mechanism could be a way towards an explanation of contradictory data for UO2 on bubble diffusivity and fission gas release rate. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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