Stochastic simulation of destruction processes in self-irradiated materials

TL;DR

This paper introduces a stochastic 2D mesoscopic model to simulate self-irradiation damage in nuclear fuel materials, predicting surface erosion, roughness evolution, and particle detachment, with results aligning qualitatively with real-world data.

Contribution

The work presents a novel stochastic simulation approach for modeling subsurface damage and particle emission in self-irradiated nuclear materials.

Findings

Model predicts surface erosion and roughness evolution.

Particle size distributions match experimental data.

Qualitative agreement with Chernobyl fuel particle data.

Abstract

Self-irradiation damages resulting from fission processes are common phenomena observed in nuclear fuel containing (NFC) materials. Numerous $\alpha$-decays lead to local structure transformations in NFC materials. The damages appearing due to the impacts of heavy nuclear recoils in the subsurface layer can cause detachments of material particles. Such a behaviour is similar to sputtering processes observed during a bombardment of the material surface by a flux of energetic particles. However, in the NFC material, the impacts are initiated from the bulk. In this work we propose a two-dimensional mesoscopic model to perform a stochastic simulation of the destruction processes occurring in a subsurface region of NFC material. We describe the erosion of the material surface, the evolution of its roughness and predict the detachment of the material particles. Size distributions of the emitted particles are obtained in this study. The simulation results of the model are in a qualitative agreement with the size histogram of particles produced from the material containing lava-like fuel formed during the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster.