Stainless steels with low contents in residual elements for nitric acid environments. Influence of melting processes

Nitric acid solutions, as they are for instance employed in the chemical treatment of nuclear fuels, do not apparently pose any more corrosion problems and the safe use of the several steels is well documented. The most difficult corrosion problems are next those related to ''tunnel'' penetrations, in the hot-rolling direction (longitudinal). This phenomenon can be quite important such as to imperial complex structures. Up to the last few years, the only manner to eliminate such ''tunnel'' corrosions was to carry out special operations of remelting and refining under careful selected slag (Electro Slag Remelting or ESR). It turns out indeed that non metallic inclusions are the prime factors in this type of corrosion. Well adapted ladle refining processes made possible to obtain equivalent results at lower costs, while purity and cleanliness are improved to such a degree that a steel of type Cr 18 - Ni 10 thus produced exhibit a nearly absolute resistance to intergranular corrosion in the 14 N (65%) boiling nitric acid (the Huey test) whatever the ''sensitization'' treatment, between 10000C and 6000C. In view of its very high tolerance to varied thermal cycles and of the near complete disappearance of any ''tunnel'' corrosion, such a steel is of great interest when complex parts are produced, by machining forged or rolled metal, which is then assembled by welding techniques or procedures which would be forbidden in the case of usual Cr 18 -Ni 10 steels. Similar improvements are also obtained on the two other special steels used in nitric environments: Cr 25 - Ni 20 - C <= 0,020 (Nb) and Cr 17 - Ni 14 - Si 4 - C <= 0,015 (Nb)