Copper and phosphorus effect on residual embrittlement of irradiated model alloys and RPV steels after annealing

Influence of thermo-mechanical embrittlement processing on microstructure and mechanical behavior of a pressure vessel steel

“…10), CRPs grow larger, and the density of CRPs decreases. This phenomenon is consistent with the results observed by Valo et al [22]. The reason is that during annealing, copper precipitates do not massively re-dissolve back into the matrix.…”

“…10, it could be found that there are no phosphorus precipitates. Thus, it could be concluded that the phosphorus has completely re-dissolved back into the matrix [22] after long-term degradation, which is different from the evolution of copper precipitates. What's more, there is no large difference between 180 h's aging and 90 h's aging (Figs.…”

Atom Probe Tomography characterization of the microstructural evolution of a low copper reactor pressure vessel steel under neutron irradiation

“…The origin and mechanisms of the microstructure changes were largely apprehended in the last thirty years on model alloys and vessel steels irradiated under laboratory conditions (electrons or ions) or in nuclear reactors [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. However, there is still a lack of experimental data at the atomic scale on low copper (<0.1%) RPV steels, irradiated at high fluences and under neutron fluxes representative of operating conditions of commercial reactors.…”

Deformation studies from in situ SEM experiments of a reactor pressure vessel steel at room and low temperatures

“…The temperature shift is associated with other material behavior changes, the most evident being an increase in yield stress [3], while more advanced models of plasticity can also be used to describe irradiation effect on the behavior, for example plasticity involving ductile damage [4]. Because several microstructural changes during irradiation are key in understanding and predicting the plastic response and fracture properties modification with irradiation [5][6][7][8], European projects have been proposed to develop multi-scale modeling strategies for the RPV internals and the RPV steel with the objective of predicting the fracture toughness from microstructural initial composition, neutron flux and fluence, and other reference data [9,10].…”