Book Description

In the operation of a nuclear reactor, the performance of the fuel cladding is critical to ensuring safe and reliable operation of the reactor. The current generation of Light Water Reactors utilizes claddings made from zirconium alloys. The material used for nuclear reactors must be able to withstand temperatures above 3000C while also being exposed to water, high pressures, and radiation. During operation, the zirconium cladding corrodes and picks up hydrogen which can adversely affect its performance. The corrosion mechanisms at work have yet to be fully characterized, especially the influence of irradiation. In order to better understand the mechanisms at work and characterize the behavior of zirconium alloys under reactor conditions, the Mechanistic Understanding of Zirconium Alloy Corrosion (MUZIC) consortium focused on the autoclave corrosion (MUZIC-1) and hydrogen pickup (MUZIC-2) outside of irradiation. The MUZIC-3 effort focuses on corrosion under irradiation. While it would be optimal to test reactor-irradiated samples, the difficulties posed by irradiating, corrosion testing, and examining these samples makes ion irradiation a more appealing manner of irradiation. Using doses and temperatures adjusted for substitution of protons for neutron radiation, this experiment seeks to characterize the effects of irradiation on the base metal, oxide layer, and water, both separately and jointly, on the corrosion of zirconium alloys. In this thesis, the beginning stages of this project, part of MUZIC-3, are presented. This involves verification of the effect of proton irradiation (which is used to represent neutron irradiation) on the base metal and characterization of the irradiated samples. The corrosion testing of this irradiated material will provide a reference for the effect of irradiation induced microstructure changes to the base metal on corrosion. In order to characterize the samples, chemical analyses and observations on crystallinity of secondary phase particles are needed. Along with the analysis of second-phase precipitates, assessment of dislocation loops to observe similarities between different radiation types is also required. Accordingly, samples were irradiated with charged particles (protons and zirconium ions) at the Michigan Ion Beam Laboratory and focused ion beam samples were prepared for transmission electron microscopy examination. The microstructure of the base metal is examined for a range of doses and irradiation temperatures and compared to the microstructure created under neutron irradiation as a preliminary to corrosion testing of irradiated samples. The results are discussed in light of existing literature.