Corrosion Phenomena of Eurofeer Steel in Pb-17Li Stationary Flow at Magnetic Field

Search of new energy sources draws the increasing attention to use for this purpose of reactors. In the Europe some years the program EUROATOM uniting scientific of the many countries for the decision of constructive problems at designing of fusion reactors operates. One of the main things in this program is the problem of liquid metals breeder blanket behaviour. Structural material of blanket should meet high requirements because of extreme operating conditions. Therefore the knowledge of the effect of metals flow velocity, temperatures and also a neutron irradiation and a magnetic field on the corrosion processes are necessary. At the moment the eutectic lead -lithium (Pb-17Li) is considered as the most suitable tritium breeder material [1–3]. In turn as a structural material have been tested both many austenitic and ferritic-martensitic steels [2–4]. As the optimum variant is considered steel EUROFER 97, which corrosion rate in liquid Pb-17Li eutectic is the least [3,4]. However, these results have been received without taking into account influence of a strong magnetic field. At the same time, this influence should be essential, as because of change of hydrodynamics of a liquid metal flow, and because of interaction of a magnetic field with a ferromagnetic steel. It has been shown in [5,6] that the magnetic field leads to increase of corrosion rate for austenitic (316L) and martensitic (1,4914) steels. Experimental data for EUROFER 97, and also a theoretical substantiation of the phenomenon are absent, that creates essential difficulties for forecasting working capacity of blanket construction. The aim of presented work were the theoretical and experimental investigations of magnetic field influence on the corrosion of EUROFER 97 steel exposed to flowing Pb-17 Li in specific designed loop.