Materials in Nuclear Energy Systems (MiNES) 2021: Advanced and Novel Materials- Session V
Program Organizers: Todd Allen, University of Michigan; Clarissa Yablinsky, Los Alamos National Laboratory; Anne Campbell, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Thursday 3:30 PM
November 11, 2021
Room: Urban
Location: Omni William Penn Hotel
Session Chair: Vijay Vasudevan, University of North Texas
3:30 PM Invited
MAX Phases for Nuclear Applications: Konstantina Lambrinou1; 1SCK-CEN
This lecture focuses on the accelerated development of MAX phase materials for Gen-II/III light water reactors (LWRs) and Gen-IV lead-fast reactors (LFRs). The MAX (Mn+1AXn) phases are nanolayered ternary carbides/nitrides, where M is an early transition metal, A is an A-group element, X is C or N, and n = 1, 2, 3. Conventional nuclear material development involves many cycles of production, neutron irradiation and post-irradiation examination until the property requirements of the end application are met. This approach is time-consuming and costly, discouraging industrial investments in innovative materials. The accelerated materials development approach, however, ensures that design, production, and performance assessment are interconnected, expediting the deployment of novel nuclear materials. Two applications are considered: (a) pump impellers for Gen-IV LFRs, and (b) accident-tolerant fuel (ATF) cladding materials for Gen-II/III LWRs. Tests done in static & flowing liquid LBE, PWR water & steam, ion irradiations at 350-800C to 40 dpa.
4:10 PM Cancelled
Exploring the Radiation Response of Innovative Accident Tolerant Fuel Candidate Concepts Based on High-entropy Alloys: Matheus Araujo Tunes1; Vladimir Vishnyakov2; Stuart Maloy1; Osman El-Atwani2; 1Los Alamos National Laboratory; 2University of Huddersfield
An envisaged solution to establish accident tolerance on Light-Water Reactors (LWRs) Zr-based alloy nuclear fuel assemblies is to deposit a suitable coating onto the cladding material. This coating must primarily be resistant to oxidation facing steam at both operational and accident conditions such as loss-of-coolant (LOCA), but in order to preserve its relevant oxidation and tribological properties, they should also exhibit resistance to energetic particle irradiation. The development of accident tolerant fuel candidate concepts based on innovative high-entropy alloys (HEAs) will be presented with focus on their radiation response assessed using light- and heavy-ion irradiations with in situ TEM within the operational temperature envelope of LWRs. The radiation response of HEA-based coatings will be compared with conventional materials (e.g. TiN films) showing that HEAs are capable of resist high-doses without significant changes in matrix phase and with suppressed nucleation and growth of extended defects like voids and bubbles.
4:30 PM
High Throughput Study of Hardening and Void Swelling in Ion Irradiated Compositionally Complex Alloys: Benoit Queylat1; Michael Moorehead1; Phalgun Nelaturu1; Mohamed Elbakhshwan1; Dan Thoma1; Mukesh Bachhav2; Dane Morgan1; Adrien Couet1; 1University of Wisconsin, Madison; 2Idaho National Laboratory
Development of next-generation nuclear reactors, operating at higher temperature and under extreme environments, requires the development of new alloys for claddings, internals, and structural materials. Compositionally Complex Alloys (CCAs) are a relatively new class of alloys that has shown promising properties under extreme environments. However, considering the extremely large compositional space of CCAs, manufacturing, characterizing and studying the effects of irradiation on their properties using conventional methods is not compatible with the deployment timeline of these reactors. In this study, we have combined innovative high-throughput CCAs processing method, using additive manufacturing and high-throughput ion irradiation at high temperature and high dose, coupled with automated characterization methods to measure void swelling and hardness evolution of a wide composition space of the Cr-Fe-Mn-Ni system as function of dpa. Preliminary results and importance ranking order based on Cr-Fe-Mn-Ni properties and void swelling/hardening performance metrics will be presented using a Random Forest Regressor algorithm.
4:50 PM
Discerning the Effects of Solute Additions in FeCrAl on Dislocation Dynamics under Irradiation Using a Machine Learning Object Detection Algorithm: Priyam Patki1; Mingren Shen2; Yudai Yaguchi2; Jack Haley3; Dane Morgan2; Kevin Field1; 1University of Michigan; 2University of Wisconsin; 3University of Oxford
Machine learning object detection algorithms have become an increasingly popular choice in detecting, quantifying, and tracking of discrete objects in microstructures allowing the analysis of objects of interest with increased accuracy with no sacrifice in time. In this study, we use the You Only Look Once (YOLO) algorithm to detect black dots formed in FeCrAl systems with varying Cr and Al concentrations during Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) in situ ion irradiations. The TEM in situ ion irradiation videos were analyzed for four alloys irradiated at 320°C up to 2.5 dpa using YOLO. This study will present the effects of solute additions on the size and density of the black dots formed on a per video frame basis and show a detailed analysis of individual defect dynamics including defect growth and mobility including trajectories using the established analysis framework.