Characterization of nuclear transmutations in materials irradiated test facilities

摘要

This study presents a comparison of nuclear transmutation rates for candidate fusion first wall/blanket structural materials in available, fission test reactors with those produced in a typical fusion spectrum. The materials analyzed in this study include a vanadium alloy (V-4Cr-4Ti), a reduced activation martensitic steel (Fe-9Cr-2WVTa), a high conductivity copper alloy (Cu-Cr-Zr), and the SiC compound. The fission irradiation facilities considered include the EBR-II fast reactor, and two high flux mixed spectrum reactors, HFIR (High Flux Irradiation Reactor) and SM-3 (Russian reactor). The transmutation and dpa rates that occur in these test reactors are compared with the calculated transmutation and dpa rates characteristic of a D-T fusion first wall spectrum. In general, past work has shown that the displacement damage produced in these fission reactors can be correlated to displacement damage in a fusion spectrum; however, the generation of helium and hydrogen through threshold reactions ((n,x,(alpha)) and (n,xp)) are much higher in a fusion spectrum. As shown in this study, the compositional changes for several candidate structural materials exposed to a fast fission reactor spectrum are very low, similar to those for a characteristic fusion spectrum. However, the relatively high thermalized spectrum of a mixed spectrum reactor produces transmutation rates quite different from the ones predicted for a fusion reactor, resulting in substantial differences in the final composition of several candidate alloys after relatively short irradiation time.