Education and Training Series #18: MATERIALS CHALLENGES FOR GEN IV REACTORS

These webinars, organised by the GIF Education and Training Working Group are streamed live monthly. The recordings and slide decks are accessible after the webinar on this website. These webinars cover a very broad range of technical and policy related topics. At the end of 2023 they have been viewed by more than 15000 people (approximately half of the views during the live streams and the other half views being of the archives on the public GIF website). In total, the GIF webinars have reached Generation IV enthusiasts, scientists, and engineers in more than 80 countries.

These webinars are organised and hosted by the GIF Education and Training Working Group (ETWG). 

The Generation IV reactors offer significant advantages over typical light water reactors including increased power conversion efficiency, passive safety features and in some cases process heat for other applications (e.g. hydrogen production). These families of reactors include 3 fast reactors [sodium fast reactor (SFR), lead fast reactor (LFR) and gas-cooled fast reactor (GFR)], one thermal reactor [very high temperature reactor (VHTR)] and two fast or thermal reactors [supercritical water reactor (SCWR) and molten salt reactor (MSR)]. The extreme environments in these families of reactors create significant challenges to materials ranging from high doses from a fast neutron flux (SFR, LFR, GFR, SCWR and MSR), more corrosive environments from molten salt (MSR) or lead coolants (LFR) and high temperatures in the helium-cooled reactor concepts (e.g. GFR and VHTR). This presentation will discuss the materials challenges in Gen IV reactor concepts and summarize radiation effects in reactor metals proposed for these concepts over prototypic irradiation conditions.