Radiation stability of serpentine concrete

A Numerical Model for Concrete Strength Change under Neutron and Gamma-ray Irradiation

“…Their survey indicated that the compressive strength of a concrete structure deteriorates by fast neutrons (>0.1 MeV) above a fluence of 1 × 10 although a decreasing trend above a dose of 5 × 10 5 kGy was reported. This result is almost consistent with the results of Dubrovskii et al (1966Dubrovskii et al ( , 1967Dubrovskii et al ( , 1968Dubrovskii et al ( , 1970, which concluded that compressive strength might be affected above a total fluence of ~5 × 10 19 n/cm 2 . On the contrary, Fujiwara et al (2009) and Kontani et al (2010) pointed out that Hilsdorf et al's (1978) experimental results included concrete or mortar that are not suitable for LWRs.…”

Radiation effects in concrete for nuclear power plants – Part I: Quantification of radiation exposure and radiation effects

“…Micro-cracking in the paste due to differential swelling was observed and reported by numerous authors (Seeberger and Hilsdorf, 1982;Kelly et al, 1969;Gray, 1971;Dubrovskii et al, 1968Dubrovskii et al, , 1966a, while micro-cracking in the aggregate has also been reported (Seeberger and Hilsdorf, 1982) and observed in other non-metal systems such as BeO (Hickman, 1968). Micro-cracking in the aggregate could explain the significant loss of tensile strength seen in carbonate aggregates with limited swelling reported by Gray (1971) .…”

“…An inherent difficulty with the current literature is a lack of systematic studies spanning the entire fluence range to be expected within the biological shield of LWRs. Only a few authors, Crispino et al (1971), Dubrovskii et al (1966aDubrovskii et al ( ,b, 1968, Elleuch et al (1971Elleuch et al ( , 1972, Granata and Montagnini (1971), Rappeneau et al (1966), Dubois et al (1969) and Rockwell (1948) conducted studies to fluences higher than 1 × 10 19 n/cm 2 , although the neutron energy cutoff varies among the studies, and few works cited a neutron spectrum, allowing for complete normalization of the neutron fluence across all datasets. For those studies where both fast and slow neutron fluences were reported, the fast neutron spectrum is reported here and shown in Table 4.…”

Radiation effects in concrete for nuclear power plants, Part II: Perspective from micromechanical modeling

“…Furthermore, fully pre-dried cement paste specimens were not affected by further exposure to neutrons. Dubrovskii et al (1968) conducted experiments on serpentine concrete that found that at an integrated neutron flux of 1.3-1.6 × 10 21 n/cm 2 , the residual elastic modulus ("the strain modulus") was about 40% of its initial value, suggesting a reduced rate of loss of elastic properties at higher fluence than suggested by the linear fit on Fig. 2.…”