Stress Corrosion Cracking of SCWR Candidate Alloys: a Review of Published Results

Abstract

Research on the development of supercritical water-cooled reactors (SCWRs) has generated a large pool of corrosion and stress-corrosion data in the open literature [1]. These data complement other aspects of reported materials properties such as creep and irradiation damage as well as microstructural degradation under various exposure/testing conditions. Unlike mechanical performance, the stress corrosion cracking (SCC) susceptibility of an alloy in a given environment can be affected by many factors including alloy composition and microstructure (including the degree of cold-working), chemistry of the environment, and the mechanical loading condition including the rate of loading (the so-called strain-rate). For in-core materials, the amount of neutron damage to which the alloy is subject also plays a key role in its SCC susceptibility. A summary is provided in this paper of the key findings from a survey of SCC test results published since the 1950s.