Assessing the effects of irradiation on reactor cavity concrete

Funding

This research was supported by the DOE, Office of Nuclear Energy, Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) Program, the Nuclear Science User Facility (NSUF) Rapid Turnaround Experiments (RTE), and by an appointment to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory ASTRO Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with UT-Battelle, LLC, via ORNL. The authors also wish to thank Kevin Field and Keith Leonard, ORNL, for their interest and support. Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), through the support of the US Department of Energy (DOE), Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) Program, has established a research plan to investigate the aging and degradation processes associated with concrete used in NPPs [2]. The basis for the plan arose in part from the Expanded Materials Degradation Analysis (EMDA) report on “The Aging of Concrete and Civil Structures, an effort jointly supported by DOE and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and performed by expert panels from US national laboratories, industry, academia, and international organizations [3]. A key finding of the panel was the urgent need to develop a consistent knowledge base to better understand, model, and predict the effects of irradiation on structural concrete in US NPPs.