Abstract: Plutonium(Pu) is a kind of widely used nuclear material,which decays into a uranium nucleus, and an alpha particle (helium) at the same time. The decay products of high-speed motion excite the dislocations in the crystal lattice, creating defects. Because the outermost layer of the helium(He) is full of electronic structures, it is difficult to dissolve in the metal. This sustained spontaneous decay accumulates a large amount of lattice damage in the material. At the same time, the He generated by decay combines with the vacancies in the metal matrix, and accumulates, nucleates and grows in the material to form bubbles by dislocation and grain boundary diffusion. The increase in the amount of He will cause the growth of bubbles, but it is not an unrestricted growth. The mechanical properties of the material determine the final size of the bubble. When the content of He is high, the bubble may even rupture, and then the surface of the material will peel off. The presence of He causing phy-sical aging phenomena of the material such as the volume change, the ductility decrease and the brittleness increase, which reduces the perfor-mance and shortens the lifetime of the plutonium.Understanding the mechanism of the influence of He on the performance of plutonium and exploring the effective measures to inhibit brittle and He damage are of great significance for the safety evaluation of long-term storage. At present, the research on the behavior of He in Pu is mainly through experiments and simulations. However, due to the radioactivity and toxi-city of Pu, researchers mostly use simulated materials of which crystal structures, outermost electronic structures or mechanical properties is same to Pu. From previous researches, it is found that the optimization of microstructure and composition are important means to regulate Pu an-tiaging. Generally, the change of microstructure mainly investigates the influence of grain boundaries and dislocations on the behavior of germa-nium in materials, while the optimization of components is studied by adding alloying elements or changing phases. In this paper, the effects of He on the volume, electrical resistivity and mechanical properties of Pu as well as the microscopic behavior of He in plutonium are reviewed. The applicability of different methods in the study of the He behavior in the plutonium is compared. And the necessity of bridging the correlation between the microscopic state and the macro performance is suggested as well as the possible research directions.
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