Activities of The Atomic Energy Commission of Argentina in The Area of Advanced Materials

The wide scope of the activities of the Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA) in the area of advanced materials shall be reviewed. Since its beginnings in 1950, CNEA became engaged in research, development and applications programs for a wide variety of materials. Because of the stage of development of the country, the role played by CNEA soon became one of leading advanced research, and combining basic oriented research with development. Thus, human resources as well as knowledge and technology resulted from this effort. The presentation shall focus on two different and important types of materials: structural materials for advanced nuclear technology, and metal oxides, as an example of functional advanced materials for nuclear fuels. The derivations to non-nuclear applications in both areas shall be briefly outlined. Within structural materials, zirconium alloys shall be the center of the talk. At present Argentina masters the technology of fabrication of structural in-core components made of zircaloy and zirconium-2.5% niobium. The fuel elements used in our nuclear power plants are manufactured in a facility with CNEA-based technology. the origin of the development of metallurgy in CNEA can be traced back to professor J Sabato, who stressed the importance of transformation metallurgy as opposed to extractive metallurgy. Not only technology was derived of CNEA's program; steels and other metals resulted in important achievements in fields like corrosion of zirconium alloys in high temperature water, stress corrosion cracking models, etc. Within functional materials, the development of technology for the fabrication of uranium dioxide pellets shall be reviewed and the current efforts to develop mixed oxides for advanced nuclear fuels shall be outlined. The scope of the research lines in CNEA regarding the use of metal oxides for non-nuclear technologies shall also be briefly commented. 14 figs