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DOE, General Matter team up for new fuel mission at Hanford
The Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management (EM) on Tuesday announced a partnership with California-based nuclear fuel company General Matter for the potential use of the long-idle Fuels and Materials Examination Facility (FMEF) at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
According to the announcement, the DOE and General Matter have signed a lease to explore the FMEF's potential to be used for advanced nuclear fuel cycle technologies and materials, in part to help satisfy the predicted future requirements of artificial intelligence.
G. P. Sabol, S. G. McDonald
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 63 | Number 1 | May 1977 | Pages 83-90
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE77-A27007
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Alloying additions of 0.5 and 1.0 wt% niobium, respectively, have been added to Zircaloy-4 in an attempt to improve its high-temperature corrosion resistance. Ingots of these modified alloys were fabricated to a 0.76-mm-thick sheet via a processing sequence compatible with commercial tubing production and were given one of four different final anneals. Subsequent testing indicated that the niobium additions had little or no effect on corrosion resistance in 360°C water. In 427°C steam, however, the 0.5%-niobium addition provided increased resistance to spalling, while the 1.0%-niobium addition decreased both cumulative weight gains and post-transition corrosion rates. The weight gains exhibited by the 0.5%-niobium alloy were relatively insensitive to final heat treatment, whereas the 1.0%-niobium alloy suffered a degradation in properties as the extent of the final anneal increased. These trends in corrosion performance were subsequently correlated with the second-phase particle size distributions present in the alloys, the best performance being obtained when the mean particle diameter was <400 to 500 Å. It was concluded that both niobium additions improved the corrosion performance of Zircaloy-4 at elevated temperatures, but that the best performance was obtained at the 1.0-wt%-niobium level.