Corrosion Characteristics of HT-9 in 500 .deg. C and 650 .deg. C Pb-Bi Liquid Metal

The next generation nuclear power reactor will use Pb-Bi as the cooling material. The steel structure materials such as HT-9 used in the reactor suffer from corrosion when they are exposed to high temperature Pb-Bi. Therefore corrosion should be prevented to use Pb-Bi as the coolant material without any safety problem. One method is to control the oxygen content in Pb-Bi. An appropriate amount of oxygen in Pb-Bi can produce a thin oxide layer on steel, and this layer protects the steel from corrosion attack. Since the required oxygen content in Pb-Bi is in the range of 10-5 to 10-7 wt%, this small oxygen content can be controlled by flowing a mixture of hydrogen gas and water vapor. The stagnant corrosion test of HT-9 samples was performed by controlling the oxygen content up to 2,000 hours. The corrosion behavior of HT-9 was analyzed at the temperatures of 500 .deg. C and 650 .deg. C with a reduced condition and a oxygen content of 10-6 wt%