Corrosion Resistance and Mechanical Stability of Nickel Alloys in Molten-Salt Nuclear Reactors

Abstract

Choosing structural materials for molten-salt nuclear reactors is a high-priority problem. The results making it possible to choose the basic structural material for a molten-salt nuclear reactor are colligated in the present article. Forced and natural circulation setups operating under reactor and laboratory conditions with molten metal-fluoride salts with different compositions have been developed at the National Research Center Kurchatov Institute: LiF–NaF–BeF₂–PuF₃, LiF–BeF₂–UF₄, and LiF–BeF₂–ThF₄–UF₄. Corrosion tests were conducted with domestically produced corrosion-resistant steel (12Kh18N10T, EP-164) and specially developed nickel-based alloys (KhN80M-VI, KhN80MTYu, KhN80MTV, et al.) as well as the alloy Hastelloy (USA), MONICR (Czechoslovakia) and EM-721 (France) in the working temperature range 600–800°C and mechanical loads up to 80 MPa on the samples.