Neutron irradiation facilities for fission and fusion reactor materials studies

The successful development of energy-conversion machines based upon nuclear fission or fusion reactors is critically dependent upon the behavior of the engineering materials used to construct the fuel containment and primary heat extraction systems. The development of radiation damage-resistant materials requires irradiation testing facilities that reproduce, as closely as possible, the thermal and neutronic environment expected in a power-producing reactor. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) reference core design for the Center for Neutron Research (CNR) reactor provides for instrumented facilities in regions of both hard and mixed neutron spectra, with substantially higher fluxes than are currently availabel. The benefits of these new facilites to the development of radiation damage resistant materials are discussed in terms of the major US fission and fusion reactor program. (orig.)