Anticorrosion protection of uranium

Uranium in atmospheric conditions is non-stable. Sloughing products are being generated on its surface during storage or use. These corrosion products make many difficulties because of necessity to provide personnel safety. Besides, uranium corrosion may cause damage in parts. The first works devoted to uranium corrosion were performed in the framework of the USA Manhattan Project in the early forties of last century. Various methods of uranium protection were investigated, among them the galvanic one was the most studied. Later on the galvanic technology was patented. The works on this problem remains urgent up to the present time. In Russia, many methods of uranium corrosion protection, mainly against atmospheric corrosion, were tried on. In particular, such methods as diffusion zinc and paint coating were investigated. In the first case, a complex intermetallic U-Zn compound was formed but its protection was not reliable enough, this protection system was inconvenient and uncertain and that is why an additional paint coating was necessary. In the case of paint coatings another problem appeared. It was necessary to find such a coating where gas-permeability would prevail over water-permeability. Otherwise significant uranium corrosion occurs. This circumstance together with low mechanical resistance of paint coatings does not allow to use paint coating for long-term protection of uranium. Currently, there are following methods of uranium protection: ion-plasma, galvanic and thermo-vacuum annealing. These are described in this paper. In the end the issue of corrosion protection in reactor core zones is addressed. Here the greatest difficulties are caused when enriched uranium heated up to 500 deg. C needs anticorrosion protection. In this case various metal coatings are not reliable because of brittle inter-metallide formation. The reliable protection may be provided only up to the temperature plus 400 - 500 deg. C with the help of galvanic copper coating since inter-metallides are not formed in this case (to compare: Ni inter-metallides are formed at temperature plus 300 - 350 deg C). If temperature does not exceed plus 80 deg. C thermo-vacuum annealing is acceptable at temperature plus 600 deg C. providing high stability of uranium surface to all kinds of oxidizing corrosion in air. (authors)