Wastage Behavior of Modified 9Cr-1Mo Steel Tube Material by Sodium-Water Reaction

The development of a sodium-heated steam generator with safety and reliability is an essential requirement from the viewpoint of the economic efficiency of a sodium-cooled fast reactor. In most cases, these steam generators, which are in the process of development or operating, are of a shell-in tube type, with a high pressure water/steam inside the tubes and low pressure sodium on the shell-side, with a single wall tube as a barrier between these fluids. Therefore, if there is a hole or a crack in a heat transfer tube, a leakage of water/steam into the sodium may occur, resulting in a sodium-water reaction. When such a leak occurs, so-called 'wastage' is the result which may cause damage to or a failure of the adjacent tubes. If a steam generator is operated for some time in this condition, it is possible that it might create an intermediate leak state which would then give rise to the problems of a multi-target wastage in a very short time. Therefore, it is very important to predict these phenomena quantitatively from the view of designing a steam generator and its leak detection systems. The objective of this study is a basic investigating of the sodium-water reaction phenomena by small water/steam leaks. For this, wastage tests for modified 9Cr-1Mo steel were conducted