Nuclear reactor materials

C. J. Rodden, Analysis ofEssential Nuclear Reactor Materials, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Washington, D.C., 1964, pp. 350—405. 

C. O. Smith, Nuclear Reactor Materials, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1967... 

The first SSMS Instrument was reported by Dempster ( 2) in 1946. Hannay of Bell Laboratories was responsible for the first applications to semiconductor materials (3,4) in the mid 50 s. The technique was so promising that commercial instrumentation became available in 1960. The attractive features of the technique were complete element coverage (all elements on the periodic table could be detected) and excellent sensitivity (to 1 part per billion atomic). The two major applications of SSMS at that time were semiconductor and nuclear reactor materials — both new technologies and both enctremely impurity sensitive. The biggest disadvantage of the technique, although not clearly realized at the time, was lack of quantitation. 

The need for Information regarding trace level bulk impurities in semiconductors and nuclear reactor materials was urgent and could not be satisfied by other techniques existing at the time. In the next decade well over 200 Instruments were operating in industrial and government laboratories here and in Europe and Japan. During this period the lack of quantitation became apparent and a major effort was made in many laboratories to overcome this fault. 

ORNL 2548 Phase Diagrams of Nuclear Reactor Materials (1959), pp. 76, 92. 

There exists an extensive literature on nucleation theory. A great diversity of problems have been discussed. They range from homogeneous gas phase nucleation,to condensation of the primodial vapor in the solar system to form meteorites, and to formation of voids in nuclear reactor materials. Several collections of review articles " as well as a book have been published recently devoted solely to nucleation problems. In these works, each author has advocated his own particular approach to nucleation theory or dealt solely with his own pet nucleation problem. 

Then in Section 5 we will present the most complex nucleation problem that has been solved to date—formation of voids in nuclear reactor materials. This problem will demonstrate the great conceptual usefulness of nucleation theory even if there is so little information available about the system of interest that there is no possibility of obtaining numerically correct nucleation rates. 

It takes many months before voids can be observed in materials irradi-cated in a nuclear reactor. Therefore, many investigators began to look at void formation during ion bombardment using accelerators to produce damage rates far higher than those obtained in the reactor. In the accelerator, voids can be produced after only a few hours of irradiation. The goal of the accelerator experiments was to find new, void formation resistant materials to be then tried as nuclear reactor materials. 

Environmental Radioactivity Environmental Toxicology Nuclear Fuel Cycles Nuclear Reactor Materials and Fuels Nuclear Safeguards Radiation Shielding and Protection Radioactive Wastes Radioactivity... 

Most zirconium is used as an oxide in commercial applications. Only a few percent is converted to the metal and used in chemical process industries because of its excellent corrosion resistance, while a special grade of zirconium is used in the nuclear industry. There are no official statistics for the production and consumption of zirconium metal. The annual global production capacity is estimated approximately at 85001, and total production/consumption is about 7000 t/year. The main applications of zirconium metal are for the nuclear energy and chemical process industries. About 85% of zirconium metal, 5000-6000 t/year, is used in the nuclear industry. Commercial-quality zirconium still contains 1 -3% hafnium. This contaminant is unimportant except in nuclear applications. For nuclear reactor materials, the zirconium metal should have a very low hafnium content of less than 0.01 wt%. Most Zr metal is produced by the reduction of the zirconium (ZrCy chloride with magnesium metal in the Kroll process. 

Nuclear reactors, materials, and waste are overseen by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 

Ma, B.M., 1983. Nuclear Reactor Materials and Applications. Van Nostrand Reinhold Company Inc., New York, NY, USA. 

Simnad, M.T., 1992. Nuclear Reactor Materials and Fuels, http //www.cryptocomb.org/ Nuclear%20Reactor%20Materials%20and%20Fuels.pdf. 

Irradiation effects in Generation IV nuclear reactor materials... 

The concentrations of interest are significantly higher (10 to 20 iug/g) than in nuclear reactor materials. Accurate analysis for boron are required to control the grain refining treatment. 

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