To the mechanism of moisture-induced corrosive processes in plutonium

摘要

Overview papers analyze experimental data and discuss various interpretations of the kinetics and mechanism of plutonium metal corrosion in water vapor and in humid and dried (0.0001 % rel.) air. The aim of this work is to demonstrate that a number of issues, which in our opinion can have a significant impact on both corrosion kinetics and structure and chemical composition of corrosion products, have been underexplored so far. As noted in , the studies of corrosion of plutonium metal in water vapor and humid air have been mostly focused on the search for a limiting stage, which is commonly considered to govern the corrosion rate in plutonium metal. The drawback of this approach as applied to the analysis of corrosion data is that it uses a simplified model instead of the real process, which in this case is treated as a "frozen" state.