| Scope |
Nuclear materials in nuclear energy applications are exposed to extreme environments during irradiation, such as high temperatures, corrosive environments, and high mechanical stress. High demanding environments such as these, require detailed understanding of the microstructure as well as short-range and long-range order, and diffusion, before and after exposure to these extreme environments to predict the lifetime and performance during operation. This symposium focuses on method development for such techniques to study these features, as well as advanced characterization to tease out the above mentioned phenomena. This can also include the application of advanced techniques that are readily used in other fields but have not yet been applied to the nuclear energy field.
Spectroscopic techniques, in general, can elucidate structural phenomena (e.g., defects) and kinetic processes that allows insight into the structure-properties-performance relationships and help guiding future materials fabrication and processing efforts. With the development of advanced spectroscopic methods, together with novel extreme technologies, numerous exciting opportunities are emerging for nuclear materials research at extremes. We envision this symposium to highlight investigations resulting from but not limited to synchrotron X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS), X-ray emission spectroscopy (XES), synchrotron X-ray/neutron diffraction, nuclear magnetic resonance, positron annihilation spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, ultrasonic spectroscopy, mass spectroscopy, etc., are encouraged. Specific topics of interest include:
• Defect chemistry and analysis
• Diffusion
• Correlation of short and long-range order
• Phase transition
• Impurity analysis
• Dopant chemistry
• Corrosion chemistry
Please note that abstracts that focus on the material development aspect should be submitted to “Developments in Advanced Nuclear Structural Materials” or “Fuels” symposia. |