A comment on the thermal conductivity of (U,Pu)O2 and (U,Th)O2 by molecular dynamics with adjustment for phonon-spin scattering

A new approach for adjusting molecular dynamics results on UO2 thermal conductivity to include phonon-spin scattering has been used to improve calculations on UxPu1−xO2 and UxTh1−xO2. We demonstrate that by including spin scattering a strong asymmetry as a function of uranium actinide fraction, x, is obtained. Greater degradation is shown for UxTh1−xO2 than UxPu1−xO2. Minimum thermal conductivities are predicted at U0.97Pu0.03O2 and U0.58Th0.42O2, although the degradation in UxPu1−xO2 is negligible relative to pure UO2.