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Recently, a combined experimental–theoretical approach to assess the effect of daughter product formation on the stability of crystalline compounds comprised of radioisotopes has been developed. This methodology was motivated by the potential impact on crystalline nuclear waste form stability of a significant fraction of the constituent atoms undergoing transmutation. What is particularly novel about this approach is the experimental use of very short-lived isotopes to accelerate the chemical evolution that occurs during decay. In this paper, we present results of density functional theory (DFT) calculations that have been performed in support of corresponding experiments on the 109 Cd x 109 Ag 1 - x S material system. 109Cd has been selected in order to simulate the decay of important “short-lived” fission products 137Cs or 90Sr (which decay via β - to 137Ba and 90Zr respectively with ≈ 30-year half-lives). By comparison, 109Cd decays by electron capture with a half-life of 109 days to 109Ag. DFT results predict the formation of heretofore unobserved Cd x Ag 1 - x S structures, which support corresponding experiments and ultimately may have implications for waste form stability.

International audience; Electrical conductivity of UO$_{2+x}$ shows a strong dependence upon oxygen partial pressure and temperature which may be interpreted in terms of prevailing point defects. A simulation of this property along with deviation from stoichiometry is carried out based on a model that takes into account the presence of impurities, oxygen interstitials, oxygen vacancies, holes, electrons and clusters of oxygen atoms. The equilibrium constants for each defect reaction are determined to reproduce the experimental data. An estimate of defect concentrations and their dependence upon oxygen partial pressure can then be determined. The simulations carried out for 8 different temperatures (973–1673 K) over a wide range of oxygen partial pressures are discussed and resulting defect equilibrium constants are plotted in an Arrhenius diagram. This provides an estimate of defect formation energies which may further be compared to other experimental data or ab-initio and empirical potential calculations.

We use first-principles calculations to provide direct evidence of the effect of aluminum, gallium, iron and uranium on the dynamical stability of δ-plutonium. We first show that the δ phase is dynamically unstable at low temperature, as seen in experiments, and that this stability directly depends on the plutonium 5f orbital occupancies. Then, we demonstrate that both aluminum and gallium stabilize the δ phase, contrary to iron. As for uranium, which is created during self-irradiation and whose effect on plutonium has yet to be understood, we show that it leaves a few unstable vibrational modes and that higher concentrations lead to an almost complete stabilization. Finally, we provide an attempt at a consistent analysis of the experimental Pu-Ga phonon density of states. We show that the presence of gallium can reproduce only partially the experimental measurements, and we investigate how point defects, such as interstitials and vacancies, affect the calculated phonon density of states.

Ab initio molecular dynamics calculations are used to investigate the vibrational properties of the high-temperature $\ensuremath{\delta}$ and $\ensuremath{\epsilon}$ phases of plutonium. We combine the local-density approximation (LDA)$+U$ for strong electron correlations and the temperature-dependent effective potential method in order to calculate the phonon spectra of the two phases, as well as their dependence on temperature. Our results show that the $\ensuremath{\epsilon}$ phase can only be stabilized when temperature and correlations are simultaneously accounted for. We are also able to quantify the degree of anharmonicity of the two phases. While the $\ensuremath{\delta}$ phase is fairly harmonic up to 1000 K, we find that the $\ensuremath{\epsilon}$ phase is strongly anharmonic, which explains why this structure dominates the phase diagram at high temperature.

Uranium and plutonium oxides are subjected to high levels of radiation damage due to the slowing of fission fragments. In addition the composition of the material evolves over time as a result of fission events. Rare gases which constitute an abundant class of fission products are particularly insoluble and therefore tend either to be released from the fuel or form small nanometre size clusters. Bubbles are liable to grow and become trapping sites for migrating defects or other insoluble atoms. Interactions between migrating atoms, defects and existing clusters will determine the rate and extent to which clusters grow. Because the transfer of gas from within the grain to the grain boundaries is thought of as being the rate limiting process for fission gas release, a review of phenomena occurring on the sub-grain scale is carried out. The microstructural modifications induced by neutron irradiations of UO2 fuels are discussed with an emphasis on their relation to fission gas release. Based mainly on TEM studies, the phenomena which are usually taken into account in fission gas behaviour models are looked at and the limitations of these models outlined. More recent experimental and modelling approaches involving ion-irradiation experiments and atomic scale modelling are presented. It is shown that combining these approaches may lead, despite the complexity inherent to the system, to a better understanding of basic radiation induced microstructural changes, clustering events, and rare gas behaviour.

Ab initio calculations based on the Density Functional Theory are carried out in order to investigate the incorporation of iodine in uranium dioxide. The GGA+U approximation is used to describe the strong correlations of uranium 5f electrons. We studied several defects that are likely to accommodate the incorporation of iodine in the material, such as uranium and oxygen vacancies, divacancy and Schottky defects. We find the iodine atoms to be stable in a neutral Schottky defects, with an incorporation energy of -1.3 eV. This result may account for the solubility of iodine in uranium dioxide observed experimentally. We also notice that the incorporation of iodine involves steric and electronic contributions. The larger the defect iodine is incorporated in, the lower is its incorporation energy. Besides, we find iodine to be charged -1, thus getting the stable electronic configuration of rare gases. We also highlight the fact that the use of GGA+U increases the number of metastable states (non global energy minima), compared to the LDA/GGA approximations. Consequently, special care has to be taken on the 5f electronic occupancies in order to ensure that the absolute energy minimum has been reached.

ABINIT is a package whose main program allows one to find the total energy, charge density, electronic structure and many other properties of systems made of electrons and nuclei, (molecules and periodic solids) within Density Functional Theory (DFT), Many-Body Perturbation Theory (GW approximation and Bethe-Salpeter equation) and Dynamical Mean Field Theory (DMFT). ABINIT also allows to optimize the geometry according to the DFT forces and stresses, to perform molecular dynamics simulations using these forces, and to generate dynamical matrices, Born effective charges and dielectric tensors. The present paper aims to describe the new capabilities of ABINIT that have been developed since 2009. It covers both physical and technical developments inside the ABINIT code, as well as developments provided within the ABINIT package. The developments are described with relevant references, input variables, tests and tutorials. Program summary: . Program title: ABINIT. . Catalogue identifier: AEEU_v2_0. . Program summary URL: . http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/summaries/AEEU_v2_0.html . . Program obtainable from: CPC Program Library, Queen's University, Belfast, N. Ireland. . Licensing provisions: GNU General Public License, version 3. . No. of lines in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 4845789. . No. of bytes in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 71340403. . Distribution format: tar.gz. . Programming language: Fortran2003, PERL scripts, Python scripts. . Classification: 7.3, 7.8. . External routines: (all optional) BigDFT [2], ETSF_IO [3], libxc [4], NetCDF [5], MPI [6], Wannier90 [7], FFTW [8]. . Catalogue identifier of previous version: AEEU_v1_0. . Journal reference of previous version: Comput. Phys. Comm. 180 (2009) 2582. . Does the new version supersede the previous version?: Yes. The abinit-7.10.5 version is now the up to date stable version of ABINIT. . Nature of problem: . This package has the purpose of computing accurately material and nanostructure properties: electronic structure, bond lengths, bond angles, primitive cell size, cohesive energy, dielectric properties, vibrational properties, elastic properties, optical properties, magnetic properties, non-linear couplings, electronic and vibrational life-times, and others. . Solution method: . Software application based on Density Functional Theory, Many-Body Perturbation Theory and Dynamical Mean Field Theory, pseudopotentials, with plane waves or wavelets as basis functions. . Reasons for new version: . Since 2009, the abinit-5.7.4 version of the code has considerably evolved and is not yet up to date. The abinit- 7.10.5 version contains new physical and technical features that allow electronic structure calculations impossible to carry out in the previous versions. . Summary of revisions: . •new physical features: quantum effects for the nuclei treated by the Path-integral Molecular Dynamics; finding transition states using image dynamics (NEB or string methods); two component DFT for electron-positron annihilation; linear response in a Projector Augmented-Wave approach -PAW-, electron-phonon interactions and temperature dependence of the gap; Bethe Salpeter Equation -BSE-; Dynamical Mean Field Theory (DMFT).•new technical features: development of a PAW approach for a wavelet basis; parallelisation of the code on more than 10,000 processors; new build system.•new features in the ABINIT package: tests; test farm; new tutorials; new pseudopotentials and PAW atomic data tables; GUI and postprocessing tools like the AbiPy and APPA libraries. . Running time: . It is difficult to answer to the question as the use of ABINIT is very large. On one hand, ABINIT can run on 10,000 processors for hours to perform quantum molecular dynamics on large systems. On the other hand, tutorials for students can be performed on a laptop within a few minutes. . References: . 1 http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.txt 2 http://bigdft.org 3 http://www.etsf.eu/fileformats 4 http://www.tddft.org/programs/octopus/wiki/index.php/Libxc 5 http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf 6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_Passing_Interface 7 http://www.wannier.org 8M. Frigo and S.G. Johnson, Proceedings of the IEEE, 93, 216-231 (2005). . . (Less)

International audience; Over the last decade, a significant amount of work has been devoted to point defect behaviour in UO 2 using approximations beyond density functional theory (DFT), in particular DFT + U and hybrid functionals for correlated electrons. We review the results of these studies from calculations of bulk UO 2 properties to the more recent determination of activation energies for self-diffusion in UO 2 , as well as a comparison with their experimental counterparts. We also discuss the efficiency of the three known methods developed to circumvent the presence of metastable states, namely occupation matrix control, U-ramping and quasi-annealing.

International audience; This work provides an illustration that density functional theory (DFT) + U calculations may quantitatively describe transport phenomena in uranium dioxide. Oxygen diffusion mechanisms are investigated using both ab initio calculations and experimental approaches mainly involving self-diffusion coefficient measurements. The dependences of the experimental data upon oxygen potential and sample impurity content demonstrate, by comparison with basic point defect and diffusion theory, that oxygen migration occurs via an interstitial mechanism. The temperature study provides an estimate of interstitial formation and migration energies which compare very favorably to energies calculated using the DFT+U approximation relating to the interstitialcy mechanism. Also, vacancy migration and Frenkel pair formation energies are shown to agree well with existing data.

The formation and mobility of point defects in UO 2 have been studied within the framework of the Density Functional Theory. The ab initio Projector Augmented Wave method is used to determine the formation and migration energies of defects. The results relative to intrinsic point defect formation energies using the Generalized Gradient Approximation (GGA) and GGA+U approximations for the exchange-correlation interactions are reported and compared to experimental data. The GGA and GGA+U approximations yield different formation energies for both Frenkel pairs and Schottky trios, showing that the 5 f electron correlations have a strong influence on the defect formation energies. Using GGA, various migration mechanisms were investigated for oxygen and uranium defects. For oxygen defects, the calculations show that both a vacancy and an indirect interstitial mechanism have the lowest associated migration energies, 1.2 and 1.1 eV respectively. As regards uranium defects, a vacancy mechanism appears energetically more favourable with a migration energy of 4.4 eV, confirming that oxygen atoms are much more mobile in UO 2 than uranium atoms. Those results are discussed in the light of experimentally determined activation energies for diffusion.

Using classical molecular dynamics simulations, we have studied the first stages of defect cluster formation resulting from 10 keV displacement cascades in uranium dioxide. Nanometre size cavities and dislocation loops are shown to appear as a result of the irradiation process. A specifically designed TEM experiment involving He implanted thin foils have also been carried out to support this modelling work. These results, in conjunction with several other observations taken from the literature of ion implanted or neutron irradiated uranium dioxide, suggest a radiation damage controlled heterogeneous mechanism for insoluble fission product segregation in UO(2). (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.