Nuclear ceramics, ceramic materials employed in the generation of nuclear power and in the disposal of radioactive nuclear wastes.

In their nuclear-related functions, ceramics are of major importance. Since the beginning of nuclear power generation, oxide ceramics, based on the fissionable metals uranium and plutonium, have been made into highly reliable fuel pellets for both water-cooled and liquid-metal-cooled reactors. Ceramics also can be employed to immobilize and store nuclear wastes. Although vitrification (glass formation) is a favoured approach for waste disposal, wastes can be processed with other ceramics into a synthetic rock, or synroc, or they can be mixed with cement powder to make hardened cements. All these nuclear applications are extremely demanding. In addition to severe thermal and chemical driving forces, nuclear ceramics are continuously subjected to high radiation doses.

This article describes properties and applications of ceramics as nuclear fuels and as waste-disposal materials. For discussion of the employment of glassy and metallic materials in nuclear waste disposal, see materials science: Materials for energy. For the production of metallic uranium and plutonium and their conversion to oxide form, see uranium processing. For detailed description of nuclear reactors and the nuclear fuel cycle, see nuclear reactor.

Nuclear fuel

Ceramic oxide fuels were introduced in the 1950s, following military applications of nuclear power. Urania (uranium dioxide, UO2) and plutonia (plutonium dioxide, PuO2) have unique features that qualify them for nuclear fuel applications. First, they are extremely refractory: for instance, the melting point of UO2 is in excess of 2,800° C (5,100° F). Second, the open crystal structure of oxide nuclear ceramics allows for retention of fission products, and their highly variable oxygen-to-metal ratio can shift to accommodate burnup. They therefore have excellent resistance to radiation damage. (The crystal structure of urania is illustrated in Figure 2B of the article ceramic composition and properties: Crystal structure.)

Other advantages of oxide nuclear fuels include inertness to many coolants, long burnup without swelling, and relatively low fabrication cost. One drawback is low thermal conductivity. This has prompted research on replacing the oxides with more conductive carbides or nitrides. Selected properties of oxide, carbide, and nitride nuclear fuels are compared in Table 1.

Selected properties of ceramic nuclear fuels*
ceramic fuel density
thermal conductivity
(W • m−1 • K−1)**
melting point
urania (UO2) 10.97   2.8 2,847
urania/plutonia (UO2/PuO2) 11.06   2.8 2,787
uranium carbide (UC) 13.51 21.7 2,507
uranium nitride (UN) 14.32 24.5 2,762
*Reprinted from H. Tsai, "Carbide and Nitride Nuclear Fuels," in Michael B. Bever (ed.), Encyclopedia of Materials Science and Engineering (1986), pp. 493–495, with permission from Elsevier Science.
**At approximately 1,000 °C.

The fabrication of ceramic nuclear fuels traditionally follows a standard powder-pellet process. This involves comminution, granulation, pressing, and sintering at 1,700° C (3,100° F) in a reducing atmosphere. The resulting microstructure consists of large, equiaxed grains (that is, with dimensions similar along all axes), with uniformly distributed spherical pores on the order of 2 to 5 micrometres (0.00008 to 0.0002 inch). The pores are intended to retain fission gas and to decrease swelling during burnup.

Ceramic fuel pellets also can be fabricated in an advanced process called sol-gel microsphere pelletization. The sol-gel route (described in the article advanced ceramics) achieves homogeneous distribution of uranium and plutonium in solid solution, enables sintering to occur at lower temperature, and ameliorates the toxic dust problem associated with the powder-pellet method.

Nuclear waste disposal

High-level waste

A 1,000-megawatt nuclear power reactor produces on the order of 20–25 tons of spent fuel per year. Spent fuel is initially stored for up to several decades underwater in storage pools. This allows the high-activity, short-half-life radioactivity to decay. Some of this material can be reprocessed to recover reusable uranium and plutonium. However, the waste also contains radioactive isotopes with much longer half-lives. It is widely accepted that this high-level waste (HLW) must be incorporated into a solid form prior to burial in deep geologic repositories.

The requirements of a nuclear waste form for HLW are rigorous. The waste form must be able to take into solid solution or at least to encapsulate the radioactive species. This is necessary so that the rate of leaching into underground water in a geologic repository will be acceptably low. Leach resistance must be maintained against deterioration of the waste form by radiation damage over long time periods, possibly lasting thousands of years. The form must be amenable to fabrication into large cylindrical monoliths, approximately 30 centimetres (1 foot) in diameter, with minimal internal cracking. Other important considerations are low cost and personnel safety from such hazards as respirable dust and radiation exposure.

In most nuclear countries the accepted first-generation solid form for disposing of HLW is borosilicate glass. In borosilicate forms, some radioactive species become part of the glass structure and others are merely encapsulated. The most advanced second-generation solid waste form is synroc, a ceramic synthetic rock. Synroc contains various titanate-mineral phases that have the capability of forming solid solutions with nearly all the radioactive species in HLW. Similar minerals exist in nature, where they have survived under demanding conditions for geologic time periods. The production of synroc involves mixing oxides or appropriate alkoxides with HLW, drying and calcining under reducing conditions, and hot-pressing or hot-isostatic-pressing the powder in graphite or refractory metal dies. (Hot pressing and hot isostatic pressing are described in the article advanced ceramics.)

Low-level waste

Over the years low-level wastes (LLW) have accumulated from the processing of nuclear fuels and wastes. These consist of aqueous solutions and sludges, which customarily have been stored in steel-lined underground tanks. However, concerns over actual and potential leaks from these tanks leading to groundwater contamination have prompted the development of solid waste forms for LLW. Some of this material will be glassy, but one promising route is to make cement with the aqueous LLW. Immobilization of some radioactive species would take place by chemical incorporation into the cementitious product phases; the rest would be immobilized within the pores of the cement paste. Extremely low permeabilities (and therefore low leach rates) can be achieved in microstructurally engineered cements.


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