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Holtec hits milestones in Palisades restart, new reactor projects
Steam rises from the Palisades nuclear power plant. (Photo: Holtec International)
The restart of Palisades nuclear power plant in Covert, Mich., has hit a milestone with the passivation of its primary system, plant owner Holtec International announced Monday, even as a firm restart date has yet to be announced.
Passivation is a chemical process that improves corrosion resistance by making plant materials less reactive. During the process, the reactor’s primary system was brought to normal operating temperature and pressure. Holtec called this passivation phase an “essential step” in maintaining the long-term reliability of equipment.
H. Xu, K. P. Youngblood, H. Huang, J. J. Wu, K. A. Moreno, A. Nikroo, S. J. Shin, Y. M. Wang, A. V. Hamza
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 63 | Number 2 | March-April 2013 | Pages 202-207
Technical Paper | Selected papers from 20th Target Fabrication Meeting, May 20-24, 2012, Santa Fe, NM, Guest Editor: Robert C. Cook | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-TFM20-16
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The point design of beryllium capsules includes three Cu-doped layers in a 160-m-thick beryllium shell to achieve the desired X-ray absorption profile. The beryllium capsules were deposited on glow discharge polymer mandrels using a magnetron sputtering process. Cu diffusion during pyrolysis to remove the mandrels after coating has caused nonuniform distribution of Cu along the azimuthal direction due to inhomogeneous diffusion. This nonuniformity along the azimuthal direction could lead to Rayleigh-Taylor instability during capsule implosion. One of the methods to solve this issue is to incorporate a beryllium oxide diffusion barrier layer at the beryllium-Cu-doped-beryllium layer interfaces. In situ and ex situ beryllium oxide layers have proved to be effective in stopping Cu diffusion. This paper will focus on the approaches we have developed to characterize the in situ and ex situ oxide barrier layer thickness by using a combination of Auger electron spectroscopy profiles and Rutherford backscattering spectrometry measurements.