Nuclear Corrosion: Achievements and Challenges

Corrosion science faces new challenges in various nuclear environments. Three main areas may be identified where increases of knowledge and understanding have been done and are still needed to face the technical needs: (i) the extension of the service time of nuclear power plants from 40 years, as initially planned, to 60 years and probably more as expected now, (ii) the prediction of long term behaviour of metallic materials in nuclear waste disposal where the corrosion processes have to be predicted over large periods of time, some thousands years and more, (iii) the choice of materials for use at very high temperatures as expected in Generation IV power plants in environments like gas (helium), supercritical water, liquid metals or salts. Service time extension, deep geological waste repositories and high temperature reactors sustain researches and developments to model corrosion phenomena at various scales, from atoms to components.