A historical perspective on understanding IASCC

Irradiation assisted stress corrosion cracking (IASCC) emerged over six decades ago with cracking of stainless steel fuel cladding, and it subsequently affected a wide range of components at much lower fluences than the fuel cladding. It was originally viewed as a distinct and mysterious phenomenon,...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of nuclear materials 2019-04, Vol.517, p.380-392
Main Authors: Andresen, Peter L., Was, Gary S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cladding
Fuels
Irradiation
Radiation
Radiation effects
Stainless steel
Stainless steels
Stress corrosion
Stress corrosion cracking
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Irradiation assisted stress corrosion cracking (IASCC) emerged over six decades ago with cracking of stainless steel fuel cladding, and it subsequently affected a wide range of components at much lower fluences than the fuel cladding. It was originally viewed as a distinct and mysterious phenomenon, with many hundreds of possible radiation effects playing a role. Oddly, given this complexity, for decades there was misplaced hope that minor compositional variations – such as reduced S or P – would make a dramatic difference. In the 1980s, common dependencies in irradiated and unirradiated materials were observed both in plant experience and laboratory data. Knowledge of SCC in unirradiated materials provided hypotheses of the key irradiation contributions, which led to critical tests of the ideas. Simplistic, short term tests gave way to more sophisticated and sensitive experiments that have had a big impact on our understanding of IASCC, which remains incomplete.
ISSN:0022-3115
1873-4820
DOI:10.1016/j.jnucmat.2019.01.057