Study of conventional isothermal si

Study of conventional isothermal sintering demonstrated that the morphology of the starting powders significantly affects the sintering kinetics and therefore the final microstructure of the sintered pellets, even if the mechanisms involved in the densification process remain mostly unchanged. Moreover, in situ sintering experiment allows the determination of the sintering time at the given conditions to achieve a desired grain size. Nevertheless, the results obtained also demonstrate that densification of the samples was not high enough to fully eliminate residual porosity and that microstructural heterogeneity can occur when using nanoscale powders.Additional steps such as preliminary grinding and/or sieving should then be needed, but could appear unsuitable in several application cases, such as conditioning of minor actinides in the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle, due to the generation of highly radiotoxic dust powders.