Abstract:
One area that holds promise for nuclear energy advancement, which is the most attractive
industry for eliminating the imbalance in the energy sector and reducing the world’s energy shortage
for the long term, is the replacement of traditional uranium fuel with plutonium fuel. The focus
on this research area is due to the growing concern of the world community about the problem of
handling spent nuclear fuel, including its further use or storage and disposal. The main aims of this
paper are to study the resistance of composite ceramics based on zirconium and cerium dioxide to
the hydrogenation processes and subsequent destructive embrittlement, and to identify patterns of
growth stability attributable to the occurrence of interfacial boundaries and changes in the phase
composition of ceramics. Studies have shown that the main effects of the structural distortion of the
crystalline structure of ceramics are caused primarily by tensile deformation distortions, resulting in
the accumulation of radiation-induced damage. The formation of Zr0.85Ce0.15O2
tetragonal phase of
replacement in the structure of ceramics results in a more than two-fold reduction in the deformation
distortion degree in cases of high-dose radiation with protons. The evaluation of the alteration
in the strength properties of ceramics revealed that the variation in the phase composition due
to polymorphic transformation of the monoclinic Zr0.98Ce0.02O2 → tetragonal Zr0.85Ce0.15O2
type
results in the strengthening of the damaged layers and the improvement of the resistance to radiationinduced embrittlement and softening.
