The measurement of retained fission gas compositions and their isotopic distributions in an irradiated oxide fuel by inert gas fusion-mass spectrometric analysis

In this work, an easy, fast and reliable measurement technique for the quantitative determination of retained fission gases in an irradiated oxide fuel was developed. Many experiments were conducted to determine the optimum conditions for fusion of an oxide fuel, for the quantitative collection and measurements of the released gases. Ion implantation technology was applied to make a krypton or xenon references in a solid matrix. A fragment of oxide fuel, about 0.1 g of an unirradiated SIMFUEL, was completely fused with excess metallic fluxes, 1.0 g of nickel and 1.0 g of tin, in a graphite crucible of a helium atmosphere for 120 s at 850 A as a mixture of metals and alloys. About 96 ± 3 to 98 ± 4% of the krypton and xenon that were injected into the instrument using a standard gas mixture was reproducibly recovered by collecting the releasing gas through the instrument for 120 s. Using the same fusion and collection conditions, it was possible to recover about 97 ± 3% of the injected krypton and xenon by fusing a fragment of SIMFUEL which was wrapped with krypton or xenon implanted aluminum foils. The recovery test results of krypton and xenon using ion planted aluminum foils gave encouraging results suggesting their potential use as a reference specimen. It was confirmed that a fragment of irradiated oxide fuel, 0.051 g, with a code burn-up of 56.9 MWd/MtU, was completely fused as the mixture of metals and alloys through the fusion conditions and more than 99% of the retained fission gases were recovered during the first fusion. Since no cryogenic trap was needed, the collected gas could be measured directly and thus the analysis time could be further reduced. Approximately 7 min was sufficient to finish the measurement of retained fission gases in the irradiated oxide fuel using the developed procedure.