| Abstract Scope |
The industrial progress towards commercially viable reactors for many advanced nuclear designs are largely limited by the availability of verified and trusted materials in the coupled extreme environments demanded. Many research institutes have demonstrated initial success in to creating materials through various nanostructuring strategies and compositional tailoring with enhanced radiation tolerance. However, a critical gap between lab proof-of-concept and commercialization remains. A suite of tools will be presented that permit both rapid screening of new materials and a deeper understanding of materials response to coupled extreme environments. These include but are not limited to in-situ Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Transient Grating Spectroscopy (TGS), Ion Beam Induced Luminescence (IBIL), and Acoustic Emission (AE). Each of these techniques can be coupled with highly controlled thermal, mechanical, and radiation environments to rapidly get a better understanding of the material degradation mechanisms and thus rapidly bridge the critical commercialization gap. |