NSUF 18-1495: TEM investigation of irradiation, irradiation creep and thermal annealing effects in nuclear graphite

The Advanced Graphite Creep-1 (AGC-1) program was developed to qualify six types (NBG-18, NBG-17, H-451, PCEA, IG110, IG-430) of graphite grades for their use in Gen IV nuclear reactor designs or to produce a reference database. The irradiation and creep conditions were performed at a similar range of temperatures and dose as a Gen IV graphite reactor core. The atomic-level and microstructure data of graphite under this irradiation conditions are scarce, limiting the understanding between the irradiation defects and bulk material properties. This research selected samples irradiated at different stages of irradiation and creep to understand the mechanisms that alter the microstructure and crystal lattice of graphite.

PCEA graphite samples will be used to determine the atomic-level structure, microstructural and irradiation defects of 7 samples. A unirradiated sample, 2 crept irradiated samples (4.36 and 5.66 dpa at a nominal temperature of 700°C) and 2 uncrept irradiated samples (3.9 and 5.02 dpa at a nominal temperature of 700°C) were selected for this study. SEM and TEM imaging will be used to characterize the different microstructures and types of defects found in each sample. Moreover, an in-situ annealing of the graphite specimens will be performed (1200°C) to understand the annealing effects on each specimen.

Informazioni addizionali

Campo Valore
Awarded Institution Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Embargo End Date 2026-02-27
Facility Tech Lead Kory Linton
NSUF Call FY 2018 RTE 2nd Call
PI Timothy Burchell
Project Member Dr. Philip Edmondson - University of Manchester (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8990-0870)
Project Member Dr. Jose Arregui-Mena - Oak Ridge National Laboratory (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6131-3268)
Project Member Timothy Burchell - Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Project Notes Awarded on 05/17/2018
Project Type RTE
Publication Characterisation of the spatial variability of material properties of Gilsocarbon and NBG-18 using random fields Jose Arregui-Mena, Philip Edmondson, Lee Margetts, William Windes Journal of Nuclear Materials 511 2018-12-01 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002231151830477X
RTE Number 1495