Core materials

Abstract

The most hostile environment to be found in any nuclear reactor system is inside the core. Relative to a thermal reactor, the high flux, high burnup, and high temperature conditions encountered in a fast spectrum reactor place severe requirements on the materials selected for core design. Hence, considerable effort has been devoted to understanding and improving the performance of fuels and structural component candidates for fast spectrum reactor use. This chapter is included to provide a more complete materials treatment of several of the general observations offered in Chapter 2 and of the design discussions included in Chapters 8, 9, and 10. However, because so much study has been given to the materials that comprise the primary building blocks of the fast spectrum reactor, it is not possible in an introductory text of this type to treat this subject with the degree of detail that a materials-oriented student would wish.