Fundamental Understanding of Crack Growth in Structural Components of Generation IV Supercritical Light Water Reactors

摘要

This work contributes to the design of safe and economical Generation-IV Super-Critical Water Reactors (SCWRs) by providing a basis for selecting structural materials to ensure the functionality of in-vessel components during the entire service life. During the second year of the project, we completed electrochemical characterization of the oxide film properties and investigation of crack initiation and propagation for candidate structural materials steels under supercritical conditions. We ranked candidate alloys against their susceptibility to environmentally assisted degradation based on the in situ data measure with an SRI-designed controlled distance electrochemistry (CDE) arrangement. A correlation between measurable oxide film properties and susceptibility of austenitic steels to environmentally assisted degradation was observed experimentally. One of the major practical results of the present work is the experimentally proven ability of the economical CDE technique to supply in situ data for ranking candidate structural materials for Generation-IV SCRs. A potential use of the CDE arrangement developed ar SRI for building in situ sensors monitoring water chemistry in the heat transport circuit of Generation-IV SCWRs was evaluated and proved to be feasible.