Corrosion Resistance of Active Coating Materials Exposed to Lead-Alloy

A key problem in the development of heavy liquid metal cooled reactors is a corrosion of the structural and fuel cladding materials by the coolants. Thus, the problem has been considered as an important design-factor that limits the operational temperature and flow velocity of the next generation nuclear reactors using lead-alloys. Corrosion data has been obtained on as-received and active coating materials of HT9 and 316L in a stagnant lead-alloy containing a reduced atmosphere of oxygen with an exposure time of 1500 hours at 600°C. After each test, the specimens were analyzed metallurgically by using a scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with a energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX) for the cross sections of the specimens. In addition, X-ray diffraction (XRD) was performed to evaluate the phase composition of the steels.