Stereometric analysis of grafitic reactor materials

Irrespective of the special type of fuel elements and apart from the heavy metal inventary, the core of a gas-cooled high temperature reactor consists only of different sorts of nuclear carbons. On the way of reaching a high standard of safety and economy, their characterization and quality control has become an indispensable necessity an important material parameter for these procedures in the porosity of grafitic reactor materials. This report gives an introduction to fundamentals and technique of a new method of determination of the macro- and mesoporosity, namely the stereometric analysis. Here the measuring procedure is based on the automatic electronic image analysis, and the mathematical calculations are characterized by the term stereometry. (orig.)