Abstract
It has been considered so far that oxygen retained in UC is intrinsic to the carbothermic reduction of UO2, so that some have regarded this reaction as inherently unsuitable for the preparation of pure UC powder, unless the release of CO gas can be kept within prescribed limits during irradiation, Nevertheless, quantitative considerations on the attainable lower limits of oxygen content in the UC have so far been scarcely reported.
The author has estimated the partial pressure of CO gas in the carbothermic reduction and the solubility of oxygen in UC from thermodynamic considerations.
It has been established as a result that the reaction has a large temperature dependency, and that the reduction is easily promoted under conditions of high temperature and low pressure, only 0.00456 ppm of oxygen being soluble in UC at 1, 550°C under 1 × 10-5 mmHg.
