Liquid Breeder Materials: Interactions With Structural Materials

The material compatibility between liquid breeder materials and structural materials is one of the important issues for the development of liquid breeder blanket systems. Table 2 lists several combinations of structural materials and liquid breeders. RAFM steels, Vanadium alloys, and SiC/SiC composites are candidate structural materials for the liquid breeder blanket. The chemical compositions of the structural materials (i.e. RAFM steels and V alloys) are presented in Tables 4 and 5.100–106 The RAFM steels are widely recognized as the candidate structural material of the liquid breeder blanket systems. Vanadium alloys are non-ferromagnetic and ductile, and have an advantage as they can increase the operation temperature of the liquid breeder blanket.104–106 SiC/SiC composites have some advantages such as high-temperature capability, small neutron adsorption and reduced activation.107 SiC materials are also promising functional materials, which are used as electrical insulators to mitigate the MHD effect. Some key components such as a heat exchanger and a mechanical pump can be made of Ni bearing steels such as 316L and 304 austenitic steels, since they are not operated under neutron irradiation condition. The corrosion behaviors of these structural and functional materials in liquid breeders are introduced in this article.