Education and Training Series #80: Corrosion and Cracking of SCWR Materials
Part of a webinar series hosted by the GIF Education and Training Working Group since 2016.
Who should attend?
Policymakers, industry professionals, regulators, researchers, students, the general public.
About the "GIF Education and Training" Webinars
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).
About this Webinar
Steam (with increased temperature and pressure) is always the challenge of power technology for high-efficiency production of electricity. Supercritical water fossil fired plants have been the mainstream for over 5 decays. A supercritical water-cooled nuclear reactor (SCWR) concept has been selected by the Generation IV International Forum (GIF), but scientists and designers are facing unprecedented difficulties in solving the problems in material, neutronics and thermo-hydraulics. The high temperature and pressure operation condition of a SCWR core is tough and challenging to the materials for the nuclear fuel cladding due to its thickness limitation, strict corrosion rate requirement and high reliability expectations. This webinar will present the state-of-art development of materials for SCWR fuel cladding, the mechanisms of general corrosion and stress corrosion cracking, the major factors affecting their corrosion and cracking performances, and the proposed testing procedures to obtain consistent and reproducible corrosion and cracking data under supercritical water conditions.
Presentation made during the webinar
Meet the presenter
Dr. Lefu Zhang is a professor at the School of Nuclear Science and Engineering of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He earned his Bachelor, Master and PhD degrees in material science from Huazhong University of Science and Technology. His research focuses on materials and water chemistry for light water reactors. In 2008, Dr. Zhang established a joint research laboratory for corrosion of nuclear power materials with Shanghai Nuclear Engineering Research and Design Institute. Under his 15 years of leadership, 80 high temperature and pressure water circulating loops have been built for general corrosion, stress corrosion cracking, fretting wear, fuel cladding tube performance and water chemistry tests, among them 15 systems are for supercritical fluid reactors. Dr. Zhang is the Chinese representative in Materials and Chemistry Project Management Board, and the Chinese substitute representative in System Steering Committee of Supercritical Water-Cooled Reactor Systems in Generation IV International Forum (GIF).