A study on the corrosion characteristics of lead-bismuth liquid metal

Pb-Bi eutectic has been adopted as a coolant and spallation target material of HYPER (Hybrid Power Extraction Reactor), an accelerator driven subcritical transmutation system. The contents and scope of the present study are to implement systematic survey and analyses of available results on the corrosion characteristics of Pb-Bi liquid metal which are considered to be the most important among Pb-Bi coolant technologies and to provide fundamental bases for future research efforts. Major parameters affecting the corrosion of structural materials in liquid metals are temperature, flow velocity, contents of impurities in coolant, compositions of structural materials, and so forth. It was already known that for traditional commercial austenitic steels of 18Cr-10Ni-Ti type and 12%Cr ferritic steels, the operating temperatures of Pb-Bi coolant cannot be raised above 400 dg C and 450 dg C, respectively. However, extensive researches have been performed to protect structural materials under higher operating temperature such as the development of various kinds of coating methods for steels and the investigations of coolant inhibition by different chemical elements. The available experimental results show that the effective methods to improve the performance of structural materials in Pb-Bi coolant are the development of suitable steel alloys, the creation of oxide type coatings, and the control of oxygen inhibition. According to the recently presented research results of URRS, utilization of these methods makes it possible to raise the operating temperature limit to 620-650 dg C. It provides the possibility of usage of Pb-Bi coolant for the transmutation system, HYPER some day. (Author). 27 refs., 6 tabs., 15 figs