Hydrogen Embrittlement of Nuclear Power Plant Materials

Nuclear Power Plant Safety

In the last decade nuclear reactors have proven to be a source of electrical energy economically competitive with conventional means of power production. With the resulting increase in orders for nuclear power stations there has been a corresponding increase in public awareness of the safety and environmental aspects of these facilities. This public awareness has been evidenced by the number of...

Prevention of Hydrogen Embrittlement in Steels

The essential facts about the nature of the hydrogen embrittlement of steels have now been known for 140 years. It is diffusible hydrogen that is harmful to the toughness of iron. It follows, therefore, that the harmful influence of diffusible hydrogen can be mitigated by preventing its entry into steel or by rendering it immobile once it penetrates the material. This review deals with the meth...

Studies of Low Temperature, Low Flux Radiation Embrittlement of Nuclear Reactor Structural Materials

Grain-boundary engineering markedly reduces susceptibility to intergranular hydrogen embrittlement in metallic materials

The feasibility of using ‘‘grain-boundary engineering” techniques to reduce the susceptibility of a metallic material to intergranular embrittlement in the presence of hydrogen is examined. Using thermomechanical processing, the fraction of ‘‘special” grain boundaries was increased from 46% to 75% (by length) in commercially pure nickel samples. In the presence of hydrogen concentrations betwee...

Fukushima nuclear power plant area

High-resolution tomographic images of the crust and upper mantle in and around the area of the 2011 Iwaki earthquake (M 7.0) and the Fukushima nuclear power plant are determined by inverting a large number of high-quality arrival times with both the finite-frequency and ray tomography methods. The Iwaki earthquake and its aftershocks mainly occurred in a boundary zone with strong variations in ...