Concentrated Defects in PuO2

From Battelle colloquium on defects in oxides; Columbus, Ohio, USA (17 Sep 1973). The accumulation of concentrated defects in /sup 238/PuO/sub 2/ by selfradiation damage is shown to proceed by a simple exponential function for samples which are initially defect free. Anomalous behavior for both ingrowth and damage recovery is related to helium inventory, but not to uranium, which is the daughter product of the alpha decay. The annealing of samples having achieved a saturation of defects at 25 deg C proceeds through a two-stage mechanism, the first having an activation energy of 0.17 eV. Both defect production and annealing behavior are characterizBd by x-ray diffraction and electrical conductivity measurements for 25 deg C < T < 1000 deg C. (auth