Measurements of the thermal conductivity of uranium dioxide by the flashing method

The flashing method is a widely-known procedure for measurements of the thermo-physical properties of solid or liquid materials employed in many laboratories around the world. Some of the advantages of this method include easy sample preparation, fast measurement times and high accuracy. Moreover, it is a non-contact, non-destructive testing procedure. The method was first proposed by [1] and has been gradually improved during last decades. Several sophisticated commercial devices utilizing the flash method are available on the market. Thanks to its advantages the method is suitable also for UO2 thermal diffusivity, conductivity and heat capacity measurements. A theoretical approach was derived and an experimental setup for UO
₂
thermal diffusivity measurements of different temperatures was proposed.