The first demonstration of reversible symmetry lowering phase transformation with heating.
ANSTO’s unique landmark infrastructure has been used to study uranium, the keystone to the nuclear fuel cycle. The advanced instruments at the Australian Synchrotron and the Australian Centre for Neutron Scattering have not only provided high resolution and precision, but also allowed in situ experiments to be carried out under extreme sample environments such as high temperature, high pressure and controlled gas atmosphere.
As part of his joint PhD studies at the University of Sydney and ANSTO, Gabriel Murphy has been investigating the condensed matter chemistry of a crystalline material, oxygen-deficient strontium uranium oxide, SrUO4-x, which exhibits the unusual property of having ordered defects at high temperatures.
“Strontium uranium oxide is potentially relevant to spent nuclear fuel partitioning and reprocessing,” said Dr Zhaoming Zhang, Gabriel’s ANSTO supervisor and a co-author on the paper with Prof Brendan Kennedy of the University of Sydney that was published recently in Inorganic Chemistry.
Uranium oxides can access several valence states, from tetravalent— encountered commonly in UO2 nuclear fuels, to pentavalent and hexavalent—encountered in both fuel precursor preparation and fuel reprocessing conditions.
Pertinent to the latter scenario, the common fission daughter Sr-90 may react with oxidised uranium to form ternary phases such as SrUO4.
>Read more on the Australian Synchrotron website
Image: Dr Zhaoming Zhang and Gabriel Murphy.