Thermal conductivity of UO2+x and U4O9−y

Stoichiometries of UO2 specimens ranging from 2.000 to 2.210 were prepared in situ at 1673 K within thermoanalytical equipment. Thermal conductivities were analyzed according to Klemens–Callaway defect model. Analysis of the data sets allows for extraction of the fundamental phonon–phonon and phonon-defect scattering contributions for the materials investigated. Low temperature thermal conductivity data was modeled using sigmoidal averaging to calculate the dual phase field UO2+x–U4O9−y. This allowed the thermal conductivity of U4O9−y to be calculated as a function of temperature up to 873 K. This fundamental dataset provides a key contribution to ongoing efforts in the modeling and simulation communities in the areas of both light water reactor fuel performance and accident evolution.