Performance of the Fe-Ni-Cr steel alloy in high temperature molten liquid lead

Degradation of steels used in the fast nuclear reactor that using liquid metals as a coolant material is still a major problem. Whereas, the design of the fast nuclear reactors as an IVth generation reactor has many advantages. Many investigations have been done with the purpose of finding the best steel alloy material and finding the best mechanism of corrosion reduction of material. Theoretically, to predict a needed novel material and also knowing the mechanism of corrosion inhibition, we can use computational methods as (MD) molecular dynamics method. Using molecular dynamics, we can explore new potential materials and new promising corrosion inhibition mechanism based on the calculated properties of materials. In the current MD work, we study Fe-Ni-Cr performance if used in a high-temperature molten lead liquid (coolant) and observing how this material has the possibility in fast nuclear reactor applications. We also studied the mechanism of corrosion inhibition based on the injection of oxygen gas into the coolant. From MD simulation we have got an important conclusion about the FeNiCr performance that may be useful for nuclear reactor design. (paper)