The incorporation of burnable neutron absorbers into nuclear fuel pellets is important regarding reactivity compensation, which enables longer fuel cycles. The dry mechanical blending route is the most attractive process to accomplish absorbers incorporation because of its simplicity. By using this route, the present work has investigated the sintering behavior of UO₂Er₂O₃ mixed fuel. A comparison with UO₂Gd₂O₃ sintering behavior was presented. The behavior of UO₂Er₂O₃ fuel sintering was similar to that reported for UO₂Gd₂O₃ fuel, e.g. two-stage sintering with two peaks in the shrinkage rate curves. The effect showed to be less pronounced for Er₂O₃. This was attributed to the characteristics of the Er₂O₃ powder particles used as raw-material, whose agglomerates can be more easily broken and thus better homogenized during the blending with UO₂ powder. These results confirmed that sinterability depends directly on the quality of the homogenization of the powders, as seen previously. A second phase was experimentally detected in the UO₂Er₂O₃ system, but its impact on the sintering behavior of this mixed fuel has not yet been clarified.

在反应性补偿方面，将可燃中子吸收剂结合到核燃料芯块中非常重要，这可以延长燃料循环时间。由于其简单性，干式机械混合路线是完成吸收剂掺入的最有吸引力的方法。通过这种途径，本工作研究了UO ₂ Er ₂ O ₃混合燃料的烧结行为。提出了与UO ₂ Gd ₂ O ₃烧结行为的比较。UO ₂ Er ₂ O ₃燃料烧结的行为与UO ₂ Gd ₂ O _3的报道相似。燃料，例如在收缩率曲线中有两个峰值的两阶段烧结。对于Er ₂ O _3，该作用显示不太明显。这归因于用作原料的Er ₂ O ₃粉末颗粒的特性，在与UO ₂粉末共混期间，其附聚物更容易破碎，因此更好地均质化。这些结果证实，如前所述，可烧结性直接取决于粉末均质化的质量。在UO ₂ Er ₂ O ₃系统中通过实验检测到了第二相，但是尚未弄清其对这种混合燃料的烧结行为的影响。