Low activation austenitic Mn-steel for in-vessel fusion materials

Thermodynamic modeling of the U–Mn and U–Nb systems

“…The investigations of U-based alloys focus not only on the U compounds used in the fuels, but also on the alloys of U and common elements of the structural materials and fission products [1][2][3]. Mn and Nb are very important alloying elements for the U-based alloys [4][5][6][7][8][9]. In order to develop new nuclear materials, it is necessary to understand the phase equilibria in U-based alloy systems.…”

New low-activation austenitic steel for nuclear power engineering

“…The weight of the experimental ingot is 2.5 kg. A significant difference from the previously studied compositions [5,[11][12][13][14][15] is a higher content of manganese and an increased content of strong carbide-forming elements (with a high tendency to carbide formation): Ta, Ti, V, Zr, W. In accordance with the concept of low-activation materials, the content of such highly activated elements as Ni, Cu, Nb, Mo, Co, Al in the new steel, also N and O is reduced to the minimum level.…”

“…Despite the fact that new low-activation alloys and steels have been developed by now and are being actively investigated, higher operating temperatures and degrees of the nuclear fuel burnout and a planned reduction in the environmental load from the nuclear waste structural materials necessitate the search for new compositions and the development of new alloys that would meet these conditions. The design of new low-activation austenitic steels as a new research avenue was initiated in [5,11,12] -Russia, [13] -USA and [14,15] -Japan in the 90s of the XX century and in early 2000s. In these works on the Fe-12Cr-(20 -25) Mn alloys, it is shown that such steels with a carbon content of 0.1-0.25 wt.% have an austenitic structure with coarse particles of M 23 C 6 carbides along the grain boundaries and MC particles in the grain interior.…”

“…Despite the high interest in low-activation austenitic steels and a significant number of relevant publications within the above-mentioned period [5,[11][12][13][14][15], the research of low-activation ferritic-martensitic steels has become even more extensive [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. In recent years, there have been only few publications on the study of microstructure, mechanical and corrosion properties of low-activation austenitic steels [16,17].…”

Effect of tungsten and tantalum on the low cycle fatigue behavior of reduced activation ferritic/martensitic steels

“…However, the high contents of nickel, molybdenum and cobalt in these steels, especially in the austenitic stainless steels, cause problems of long life activation [2,3]. Therefore a lot of research devoted to adjustment of alloying elements is being carried out which has led to the development of several stainless steels [4,5] and chromium steels [6,7]. For example EUROFER97, is a modified composition of conventional ferritic/martensitic 8-12% CrMoVNb steels (modified 9Cr-1Mo steel) developed mainly by substituting elements such as molybdenum and niobium with tungsten and tantalum respectively which have the same metallurgical functions as alloying elements and achieve fast radioactive decay properties.…”