Structural materials for

fission & fusion energy

Structural materials represent the key for containment of nuclear fuel
and fission products as well as reliable and thermodynamically efficient
production of electrical energy from nuclear reactors. Similarly, high-
performance structural materials will be critical for the future success
of proposed fusion energy reactors, which will subject the structures
to unprecedented fluxes of high-energy neutrons along with intense
thermomechanical stresses. Advanced materials can enable improved
reactor performance via increased safety margins and design flexibility,
in particular by providing increased strength, thermal creep resistance
and superior corrosion and neutron radiation damage resistance. In
many cases, a key strategy for designing high-performance radiation-
resistant materials is based on the introduction of a high, uniform
density of nanoscale particles that simultaneously provide good high
temperature strength and neutron radiation damage resistance.
Steven J. Zinkle* and Jeremy T. Busby
Materials Science and Technology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, P.O. Box 2008, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 37831-6132 USA
*Email: zinklesj@ornl.gov

A diverse portfolio of energy options (encompassing renewable
energy, biofuels, nuclear power, and fossil energy systems with
improved thermodynamic efficiency and improved control of
effluents), coupled with improvements in energy efficiency for
buildings, transportation and industry, is an attractive strategy
to achieve cost-effective and environmentally sustainable energy
resources that will enable improvements in the worldwide
standard of living. Sustained improvements in the operating
performance of fission reactors1,2, along with advances in the
plasma physics knowledge required for heating and controlling
fusion energy reactions3-5, suggest that fission and fusion energy
can be important components of the overall energy portfolio for
the 21st century and beyond.
Fission: an increasingly reliable supplier of
baseload electricity.
Currently, over 430 nuclear fission reactors in 30 countries provide
about 15% of the world’s supply of electricity6. The vast majority of
these reactors are based on uranium dioxide fuel pellets arranged in
long cylinders (“fuel rods”) with surrounding flowing water channels.

12 NOVEMBER 2009 | VOLUME 12 | NUMBER 11 ISSN:1369 7021 © Elsevier Ltd 2009 Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
 Structural materials for fission & fusion energy
A typical power reactor core contains about 50 000 fuel rods with a
height of ~4 m and diameter ~1 cm. Since the 1980s, fuel burnup
and cycle length for nuclear reactors have steadily increased due
to improvements in water chemistry control and development of
improved corrosion-resistant steam generator and fuel cladding
structural materials, and are the primary reasons that the average
capacity factor for U.S. fission reactors is now >90 % (compared to
~74 % for coal fired power plants)7.
As illustrated in Fig. 1, a diverse range of structural materials
are used for a wide variety of important roles in fission reactors8.
The fuel cladding serves to reliably contain the fuel and radioactive
fission products while simultaneously efficiently transferring the
intense nuclear heat from the fuel to the coolant. The typical heat
flux through the cladding is ~1 MW/m2 (~1% of the heat flux at the
surface of the sun). Zirconium alloys are used as fuel cladding in most
commercial reactors, due to their compatibility with UO2 and water,
their adequate thermal conductivity and ease of manufacturing. Wire
wrap is used to prevent constriction of coolant channels from slight
fuel pin bowing. The fuel typically remains in the reactor for several
years, with the cladding continuously exposed to high temperature
(~300 °C), mechanical stress, and intense radiation. Key concerns
include oxidation, hydriding, build-up of low thermal conductivity
Fig. 1 Schematic of key components utilizing structural materials in pressurized water fission reactor8.
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corrosion deposits, and effect of hydrogen on cracking and corrosion.
The ~100 tonne reactor core is secured in place by a variety of fuel rod
constraint and reactor core support components typically constructed
of austenitic stainless steel and some Ni-base alloys such as X-750.
These core internal structures must reliably operate for over 30 years
in a high radiation environment (resulting in higher accumulated doses
than the fuel cladding in many cases) at ~300 °C without substantial
dimensional changes or degradation in mechanical properties due to
stress corrosion cracking or radiation damage. The reactor pressure
vessel (quenched and tempered Mn-Mo-Ni low-alloy pressure vessel
steel) serves as the critical safety boundary between the reactor and
the environment, and is generally considered the key lifetime-limiting
(irreplaceable) component for a nuclear reactor. A key concern is loss
of fracture toughness due to radiation-induced defect cluster hardening
and radiation-induced precipitation. The embrittlement is monitored by
regular mechanical property testing of surveillance coupon specimens
located at the inside wall of the pressure vessel. Piping and heat
exchanger materials (ferritic steels and Ni-base alloys such as Alloy
600 and 690) are designed to enable reliable and thermodynamically
efficient conversion of thermal energy from the reactor into steam
that drives turbines to generate electricity. Due to the desire for
reliable operation for decades at elevated temperatures in an aqueous
NOVEMBER 2009 | VOLUME 12 | NUMBER 11 13
REVIEW Structural materials for fission & fusion energy
environment at 300 to 350 ºC, key concerns for the piping and
heat exchanger materials include thermal aging and complex water
chemistry issues that may induce corrosion or stress corrosion cracking.
Aqueous corrosion is a complex form of degradation that is
dependent on temperature, material condition, material composition,
water purity, water pH, water impurities, and dissolved gas
concentrations. The predominant corrosion mechanism varies
with location in the reactor core and multiple mechanisms may
be simultaneously operating9,10. These include the mechanisms of
uniform corrosion, boric acid corrosion, flow accelerated corrosion,
and/or erosion corrosion which will occur over a large area in a
fairly homogenous manner. Localized corrosion modes occur over
much smaller areas, but at much higher rates than general corrosion
and include crevice corrosion, pitting, galvanic corrosion, and
microbiologically influenced corrosion. Finally, environmentally assisted
cracking includes other forms of degradation, which are closely related
to localized or general corrosion with the added contribution of stress.
In a light water reactor, a number of different environmentally assisted
cracking mechanisms are observed: intergranular stress-corrosion
cracking11, transgranular stress corrosion cracking, primary water stress
corrosion cracking, irradiation-assisted stress corrosion cracking (IASCC)
and low-temperature crack propagation. While all forms of corrosion
are important in managing a nuclear reactor, IASCC has received
particular attention over the last four decades due both to its severity
and unpredictability12. Despite over thirty years of international study,
the underlying mechanism of IASCC is still unknown, although recent
work led by groups such as the Cooperative IASCC Research Group has
identified several possible causes.
Fusion: a potentially attractive but
technologically challenging endeavor.
Sustained progress over several decades has taken fusion researchers
to the brink of demonstrating the plasma physics feasibility of fusion
energy via magnetically-confined4,13,14 and inertially-confined13,15,16
concepts. Major fusion facilities recently completed (e.g., National
Ignition Facility)17 or under construction (e.g., ITER)18 are designed to
explore the key remaining plasma physics issues near reactor-relevant
operating conditions. If successful, the focus of attention will shift
towards large-scale next-step fusion facilities that will examine the
daunting technological hurdles to practical fusion energy.
A schematic of a prototypic magnetic fusion energy reactor5 is
shown in Fig. 2. The fusion reactions are induced within a toroidal-
shaped high temperature ionized plasma that is shaped by powerful
toroidal and poloidal field magnets. The heat and energetic neutrons
produced by the deuterium-tritium (D-T) fusion reaction are absorbed
by the surrounding first wall, blanket, and divertor components. The
fusion reaction occurs inside a vacuum vessel to prevent atmospheric
contamination of the D-T plasma. The major functions of the blanket
region are to efficiently capture the energy produced by the fusion
14 NOVEMBER 2009 | VOLUME 12 | NUMBER 11
Fig. 2 Schematic of key components in a magnetically-confined fusion reactor,
based on the ARIES-AT tokamak reactor design study5.
reactions and transfer the heat to a coolant for electricity generation,
and to create and extract fresh tritium fuel (by utilizing nuclear
transmutation reactions with lithium-containing liquid or solid
materials) to enable continuous operation of the fusion energy system.
A wide variety of structural materials, reactor coolants, and tritium
generation materials systems have been evaluated for potential use in
future fusion reactors. Table 1 summarizes the material combinations
that are considered to be the most promising based on thermodynamic
efficiency, neutronics, chemical compatibility, and other engineering
considerations19,20.
High-performance structural materials will be critical for the future
success of proposed fusion energy reactors, which will subject the
structures to unprecedented fluxes of high-energy neutrons along with
intense thermomechanical stresses and high temperature coolants that
may induce corrosion19,21-31. Steady-state heat fluxes for first-wall
and divertor components in proposed magnetically-confined fusion
energy reactors are projected to be in the range of 1 to 10 MW/m2,
which is substantially higher than the highest heat flux for structural
materials in fission reactors (~1 MW/m2 for the fuel cladding). The
Table 1. Summary of leading proposed structural
materials, coolant and tritium generation concepts
for fusion energy systems19,20. The filled cells in the
table indicate material combinations that are under
consideration for fusion energy blankets. FLiBe is a LiF-
BeF2 molten salt.
Coolant/Tritium Generating Material System
Structural
Material H2O/ He/Li H2O/Li FLiBe/
Li/Li He/PbLi
PbLi ceramic ceramic FLiBe
Ferritic steel
V alloy
SiC/SiC
 Structural materials for fission & fusion energy
design lifetime doses for the first wall and blanket structural materials
are about five times higher than the core internal structures for existing
fission reactors. In addition, the high average neutron energy associated
with the deuterium-tritium fusion reaction compared to fission tends
to produce much higher levels of transmutant solutes such as H and
He in the structural materials that generally magnify radiation-induced
degradation processes.
A key additional constraint for fusion structural materials is the
international mandate for intrinsic safety (i.e., no public evacuation
in case of a loss of coolant accident) and minimal long-term
environmental impact (i.e., no long-lived radioisotopes that would
require deep geologic burial or equivalent sequestration) for the
fusion reactor structures21,23,26,29,32-35. Consideration of this reduced-
activation mandate, along with the requirement for high performance,
leads to three major options for fusion structural materials21. Ferritic/
martensitic steel (where high activation solutes such as Mo and Nb
in commercial steels are replaced by W and V) is the most mature
option21,36-41, with natural leveraging of the extensive worldwide
expertise and industrial infrastructure in steelmaking. Oxide dispersion
strengthened steel represents a potential future higher-performance
option if key issues such as property nonuniformity, joining, and
high cost can be resolved39,40,42-46. Refractory alloys based on
either vanadium47-50 or tungsten30,51-53 alloys represent a higher
performance, higher risk option. Vanadium alloys are particular
attractive for self-cooled lithium blanket systems19, but are not
considered to be viable for other blanket concepts21. SiC/SiC ceramic
composites offer the potential for the highest thermodynamic
efficiency and best safety and waste disposal margins, but are
the least developed materials system for large-scale structural
applications21. Numerous issues including structural engineering design
rules, how to achieve leak-tight boundaries for gas cooled systems,
joining and other fabrication issues, radiation stability uncertainties,
improvement of thermal conductivity (and minimization of radiation-
induced degradation), and fabrication cost need further research
and development to enable this materials system to achieve its full
potential54-57.
Radiation damage: A multi-faceted challenge
to structural materials in fission and fusion
reactors
The energetic neutrons produced by the fission and fusion reactions
have sufficient kinetic energy to dislodge substantial numbers of
atoms in structural materials from their lattice sites over the projected
operating lifetimes of the reactors, creating defects associated with
the missing lattice atoms (vacancies) and the dislodged atoms
that reside in the lattice interstices (self-interstitial atoms, SIAs).
The amount of radiation damage from these ballistic collisions is
quantified58-61 in terms of displacements per atom, dpa. A damage
level of 1 dpa corresponds to “stable” displacement of every atom
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from its lattice site. For reactor operating temperatures, there is
sufficient thermally activated diffusion of the radiation-induced
defects to enable recombination of many of the vacancies and SIAs
so that the retained displacement damage is a fraction of the dpa
value. A key strategy for designing radiation resistant materials is to
promote very efficient recovery of the defects: Very little can be done
to alter the instantaneous displacement damage from exposure to
energetic neutrons, but substantial resistance to radiation damage can
be engineered by efficiently facilitating the recombination of these
defects. Considering that dimensional instabilities above a few percent
generally cannot be tolerated in large-scale engineering structures
and that future reactor designs call for structural materials that will
be exposed to damage levels in excess of 100 dpa, the challenge is to
engineer “self-healing” defect recombination processes into structural
materials that are ~99.99 % efficient. A further challenge is that these
engineered defect recombination structures must be resistant to the
vigorous transient (~1 fs to 1 ps) atomic mixing that occurs within
fast neutron-induced displacement cascades; the magnitude of this
transient atomic mixing is roughly two orders of magnitude higher
than the dpa value58,60,61 and could result in dispersal or dissolution of
nanoscale precipitate structures.
Radiation damage poses five main threats to the operation of
structural materials, emerging at different operating temperatures
and damage levels60,62. These phenomena are summarized in Fig. 3.
At low temperatures (below 0.3-0.4 TM, where TM is the absolute
melting temperature), radiation-induced defect clusters (predominantly
created directly in displacement cascades) serve as strong obstacles to
dislocation motion. This radiation hardening is usually accompanied
by substantial reductions in uniform elongation and macroscopic work
hardening capacity, and can induce loss of fracture toughness in body
Fig. 3 Summary of five radiation damage threats to structural materials
performance.
NOVEMBER 2009 | VOLUME 12 | NUMBER 11 15
REVIEW Structural materials for fission & fusion energy
centered cubic metals and alloys63. Since the radiation hardening
emerges at relatively low doses (0.001 to 0.1 dpa), radiation hardening
and embrittlement often defines the lower operating temperature
limit for structural materials in neutron irradiation environments. At
intermediate temperatures, three distinct radiation effects phenomena
are of potential significance for doses above ~1 to 10 dpa: radiation-
induced segregation and precipitation (0.3-0.6 TM) that can lead to
localized corrosion or mechanical property degradation such as grain
boundary embrittlement64, void swelling from vacancy accumulation
(0.3-0.6 TM) that can create unacceptable volumetric expansion65, and
radiation induced creep65 and/or anisotropic growth66 (0.2-0.6 TM)
that can produce dimensional expansion along directions of high stress
and/or specific crystallographic directions. At very high temperatures
(>0.5 TM) and under applied mechanical stress, helium produced
by neutron transmutation reactions in the structural material may
migrate to grain boundaries and form cavities, thereby causing
intergranular fracture with limited ductility in stressed materials67. This
high temperature helium embrittlement of grain boundaries typically
emerges for helium concentrations above 10 to 100 appm (~1 to
100 dpa depending on material and neutron spectrum) and becomes
increasingly severe with increasing temperature and applied stress and
decreasing deformation rate. Along with chemical compatibility and
thermal creep strength, high temperature helium embrittlement may
define the maximum allowable operating temperature for a structural
material in neutron irradiation environments.
Structural materials issues for fission
reactors: life extension of existing reactors
and deployment of next generation reactors
Nuclear reactors represent a harsh environment for components,
combining the effects of high temperature water, stress, vibration, and
an intense neutron field. Degradation of materials in this environment
can lead to reduced performance, or in severe cases, sudden failure.
When polled during a recent Electric Power Research Institute study on
the most challenging issues facing further life extension, two-thirds of
the 47 US nuclear utility executives cited nuclear power plant reliability
as the key issue, with materials aging and cable/piping degradation
listed as the primary concerns.
Materials degradation in a nuclear power plant is complex due to
the wide variety of materials, environmental conditions, and stress
states68. Over 25 different metal alloys can be found within the
primary and secondary systems of today’s light water reactor fleet
(cf. Fig. 1) and additional materials exist in the concrete containment
vessel, instrumentation and control systems, cabling, buried piping
and other support facilities. As a result, the dominant forms of
degradation may vary greatly between different reactor systems,
subsystems, and components. However, material degradation of any
system can have an important role in the safe and efficient operation
of a nuclear power plant. Routine surveillance and component
16 NOVEMBER 2009 | VOLUME 12 | NUMBER 11
replacement can mitigate these factors, although failures may still
occur. Considering the potential for power uprates (resulting in higher
operating temperatures) and for reactor life extensions to 60 years or
beyond, many components must tolerate the reactor environment at
temperatures near or slightly higher than their original design limit for
very long times. This may increase the susceptibility to failure for some
components and may introduce new degradation modes. While all
components (except perhaps the reactor pressure vessel and concrete
support structures) can be replaced, it may not be economically
favorable. Therefore, understanding, controlling, and mitigating
materials degradation processes are key priorities for reactor operation,
power uprate considerations, and life extension.
The Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV) is the largest component in
the pressure boundary of a light water nuclear reactor. It provides
the primary line of defense against a release of radiation and
the steels used for RPVs must maintain conservative margins of
fracture toughness so degradation does not threaten the integrity
of the RPV during either normal operation and maintenance cycles
or under accident transients69. Neutron irradiation can degrade
the fracture toughness of these steels and in some cases severely.
Extending the operating lifetime of a reactor to beyond 60 years may
require a careful evaluation of these irradiation-induced embrittlement
effects69.
Structural components within the reactor core (commonly 304
or 316 stainless steel) are often the most critical for safe and reliable
operation as the failure of a core internal component may have very
severe consequences. There are a number of key issues that must
be considered and evaluated when considering extended reactor
lifetimes, including thermal aging, fatigue, corrosion, and irradiation
damage. The extended exposure of core internal components to
elevated temperature may be sufficient to induce a variety of phase
transformations and potentially reduce fracture toughness. Fatigue has
been identified as a potential concern for existing service conditions
for a number of different components and subcomponents9. Extension
to longer service lifetimes may exacerbate the susceptibility to fatigue.
Over a forty-year operating time period in a light water reactor,
internal structural components may be exposed to fast neutron
fluences up to ~1022 n/cm2 and ~1023 n/cm2 (E > 1 MeV) in a boiling-
and pressurized-water reactor, corresponding to ~7 dpa and 70 dpa,
respectively. Extending the service life of a reactor will increase the
total neutron fluence to each component. Fortunately, radiation effects
in stainless steel are relatively well known to high damage levels24,65,68,
in part because these materials are also of interest for fast-spectrum
fission and fusion reactors that require operation to very high fluence.
Allen and Busby recently reviewed key modes of irradiation-induced
degradation of structural materials for light water reactors and
concluded that the effects of radiation-induced segregation, swelling,
and/or precipitation may require the most evaluation for continued
operation70.
 Structural materials for fission & fusion energy
In addition to elevated temperatures, intense neutron fields, and
stress, components must also be able to withstand a corrosive aqueous
environment71. The presence of stress may also promote varying
forms of stress-corrosion cracking (e.g. irradiation-assisted stress
corrosion cracking, primary water stress corrosion cracking, etc). Since
the operating corrosion mechanism generally varies with location in
the reactor coolant circuit, a number of different mechanisms may be
operating at the same time. Clearly, even moderate rates of corrosion
are not acceptable for the safe and reliable operation of a reactor
under extended lifetime conditions. As a result, the various corrosion
mechanisms must all be understood and evaluated for different reactor
components and sub-systems to ensure safe extended service.
For advanced future fission reactor systems such as proposed
Generation IV reactors, structural material performance and integrity
are just as important and likely even more complex than light water
reactor applications24,27,72-77. Qualifying a material for service in
a liquid metal, molten salt, or gas environment would be based on
principles similar to those in water reactors. While the material
of choice may be a different alloy (or even ceramic), the material
must still have well-established and high-performance mechanical
properties (including good thermal creep resistance), long-term phase
stability, and compatibility78 with the reactor coolant. It must also be
able to pass the licensing process and be supported by an extensive
and reproducible set of data on relevant properties. Finally, since
the materials could be used in an intense high-energy neutron field,
it must exhibit good dimensional, mechanical and microstructural
stability to neutron displacement damage. The radiation-resistance
is often the most challenging requirement to evaluate since the
key degradation mechanisms are sensitive to the specific radiation
conditions. Fig. 4 compares the proposed operating temperatures and
lifetime displacement damage levels for structural materials in the
six Generation IV concepts and three fusion energy systems with the
existing knowledge base.
Fig. 4 Overview of operating temperatures and displacement damage dose
regimes for structural materials in current (generation II) and proposed future
(Generation IV) fission and fusion energy systems. The six Gen IV fission
systems are Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR), Super Critical Water
Reactor (SCWR), Lead Fast Reactor (LFR), Gas Fast Reactor (GFR), Sodium
Fast Reactor (SFR), and Molten Salt Reactor (MSR).
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A pathway to improved structural materials
for fission and fusion energy.
Existing structural materials have rather limited operating temperature
regimes where they can be utilized in a neutron irradiation
environment30,79, as summarized in Fig. 5 for moderate damage
levels of 10 to 50 dpa. At low temperatures, the reduced ductility
associated with low temperature radiation hardening creates
conditions where modified (larger safety margin) engineering design
rules must be used80. In cases where fracture toughness is reduced by
low temperature irradiation, the operating temperature is restricted
to higher temperatures where embrittlement does not occur for
anticipated normal and transient operating conditions. The upper
operating temperature limit is typically determined by thermal creep
strength or high temperature helium embrittlement considerations.
Advanced materials can enable improved reactor performance
via increased safety margins and design flexibility, in particular by
providing increased tensile strength, thermal creep resistance and
superior neutron radiation damage resistance. A key strategy for
designing high-performance radiation-resistant materials is based on
the introduction of a high, uniform density of nanoscale particles that
simultaneously serve as obstacles to dislocation motion (providing
high strength) and point defect recombination centers (providing good
radiation damage resistance)29,39-41,45,81-86.
Development of structural materials for large-scale energy
application is historically a long and costly process, due to the
extended period to develop a new alloy followed by an even longer
proof testing period to validate the performance of the material in
prototypic environments for appropriate licensing authorities. For
example, Fig. 6 shows the historical rate of progress in improving the
upper operating temperature limit of steels for general (non-nuclear)
structural applications has averaged ~2.5 °C/year for the past 60
years87. Materials science tools such as computational thermodynamics
and multiscale radiation damage computational models, in conjunction
Fig. 5 Estimated operating temperature windows (dark shaded region)30,79 for
structural materials in nuclear energy systems for damage levels of 10 to 50
dpa. The light blue and red regions represent lower and upper temperature
uncertainty bands.
NOVEMBER 2009 | VOLUME 12 | NUMBER 11 17
REVIEW Structural materials for fission & fusion energy
Fig. 6 Historical rate of improvement in the maximum operating temperature
for four generations of structural steels, based on results summarized by
Viswanathan87.
with focused experimental validation studies (nonirradiation and
irradiation environments), may offer the potential to reduce the time
period to develop and qualify structural materials for advanced nuclear
energy systems. It is worth noting that many structural materials
currently being used in fission reactors are based on alloys that were
originally developed in the 1950s and 1960s.
There are numerous examples where high-performance materials
are being developed with the assistance of modern materials science
tools37,41,81-84,86,88-90. For example, first principles atomistic modeling
results91 provided important insight that the formation of highly stable
nanoscale clusters enriched in Y, Ti and O from initial Y2O3 and Fe-Ti
master alloy powders in a nanocluster-strengthened ferritic steel may
have been enabled by the high concentration of vacancies produced
during ball milling as part of the powder metallurgy processing of this
steel. This nanocluster-strengthened ferritic steel has exhibited very
high strength and good fracture toughness down to 120 K, and did not
exhibit the sharp degradation in fracture toughness following neutron
irradiation to moderate doses near 300 °C that caused embrittlement
in conventional ferritic/martensitic steel44,92. Similarly, ultra-high
strength precipitation-hardened steels with adequate fracture
toughness have recently been developed by carefully controlling the
formation of fine-scale (Mo,Cr)2C precipitates93. Fig. 7 compares the
fracture toughness versus tensile strength behavior for the Aermet
precipitation-strengthened steel93 and the 14YWT nanocluster-
strengthened steel92 with the behavior for conventional bainitic and
ferritic-martensitic steels. In all steels, the classic tradeoff between high
strength and high toughness is evident. However, the critical tensile
strength above which fracture toughness is reduced to low values is
approximately 700 MPa in the conventional steels, whereas it is nearly
2000 MPa in the nanocluster-strengthened and fine-scale (Mo,Cr)2C
strengthened steels.
18 NOVEMBER 2009 | VOLUME 12 | NUMBER 11
Fig. 7 Tradeoff between fracture toughness and tensile strength for
conventional and advanced92,93 steels.
This suggests that it may be possible to develop alloys with
substantially improved mechanical properties compared to
conventional alloys by appropriate use of either evolutionary ingot-
based steel metallurgy or alternative processing techniques such as
powder metallurgy production of oxide dispersion strengthened steels.
In either approach, development of a high density of thermally stable,
nanoscale hardening centers produces good mechanical properties. The
14YWT nanocluster-strengthened alloy also exhibits very good high
temperature particle stability and thermal creep strength94, and has
demonstrated good resistance to low-temperature neutron irradiation
embrittlement in preliminary low-dose irradiation tests. Limited success
has also been obtained in creating high strength structural alloys
that simultaneously convey improved high temperature oxidation
resistance86. The prospect of developing new corrosion-resistant
high-performance structural alloys tailored for specific coolants and
operating regimes is an exciting goal worthy of future research.
Additional comprehensive validation of the performance of these types
of advanced structural materials in prototypic operating environments
will be a key step to obtain acceptance of these advanced materials by
reactor vendors, utilities, and licensing authorities.
Conclusions
In order for fission and fusion energy systems to reach their full potential,
high performance structural materials are needed that encompass
improved mechanical strength, adequate ductility and fracture toughness,
good radiation resistance, and corrosion resistance. Development of a
high density of uniformly distributed nanoscale hardening centers that are
stable to thermal coarsening and radiation-induced growth or shrinkage
is a conceptually attractive method to create a high-performance
radiation resistant material. Emerging results from several classes of
ferritic and austenitic steels suggest that substantial improvement
 Structural materials for fission & fusion energy
in the performance of structural materials might be achievable.
Considerable experimental validation will be needed to demonstrate the
superior stability of these new alloys under prolonged exposure to high
temperatures, mechanical stress, and neutron irradiation.
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REVIEW
Acknowledgments
This work was sponsored in part by the Light Water Reactor Sustainability
Research and Development program, Office of Nuclear Energy and by the
Office of Fusion Energy Sciences, U.S. Department of Energy.
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