Abstract
High purity SiC and SiC/SiC composites coated with commercial TiN, Cr, CrN, or CrN/Cr multilayer coatings were irradiated in Ar or flowing PWR water in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Nuclear Reactor Laboratory (MITR). Irradiation in Ar was performed in the core. In the water environment, identical samples were placed in one of three different locations: in-core, providing exposure to neutron damage and radiolysis-affected water; above-core, where samples were exposed to radiolysis-affected water but not neutron damage, or outside of the core, where samples were exposed to the coolant water without the effects of radiation. Radiation in Ar revealed significant cracking of all but the TiN coatings, attributed to differential swelling between the coating and substrate. Lattice swelling was not observed in any of the coatings, but 0.2% void swelling was observed in the Cr coating. All of the coatings failed during water exposures in the core. CrN/Cr spalled in each condition. Cr was protective, except under radiation damage as a result of cracking, and TiN severely degraded in the core with no coating was found following exposure. A SiC/coating ATF cladding system is expected to perform adequately following improvements in coating ductility and purity.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 152203 |
| Journal | Journal of Nuclear Materials |
| Volume | 536 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 1 2020 |
Funding
The research is sponsored by the Advanced Fuels Campaign of the Nuclear Technology Research and Development Program, Office of Nuclear Energy, Department of Energy (DOE) , and Westinghouse Electric Company/General Atomics FOA program , under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with UT-Battelle LLC. The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Travis Dixon, Michael Mcalister, Stephanie Curlin, and the rest of the staff at ORNL’s Low Activation Materials Development and Analysis (LAMDA) laboratory, as well as Gordon Kohse and David Carpenter at the MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory. Thanks also to William Ponder and Steven Zinkle for their thorough review of this document. The research is sponsored by the Advanced Fuels Campaign of the Nuclear Technology Research and Development Program, Office of Nuclear Energy, Department of Energy (DOE), and Westinghouse Electric Company/General Atomics FOA program, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with UT-Battelle LLC. The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Travis Dixon, Michael Mcalister, Stephanie Curlin, and the rest of the staff at ORNL's Low Activation Materials Development and Analysis (LAMDA) laboratory, as well as Gordon Kohse and David Carpenter at the MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory. Thanks also to William Ponder and Steven Zinkle for their thorough review of this document. This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, Advanced Fuels Campaign and this manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow other to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan ( http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan ).
Keywords
- ATF
- Accident-tolerant fuel cladding
- Ceramics
- Coating
- Composites
- Corrosion
- Cr
- CrN
- Neutron irradiation
- SiC
- TiN