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Conference Article: Radiation behaviour of graphite for HTGR

Shtrombakh, Ya.I.; Platonov, P.A.; Gurovich, B.A.; Alekseev, V.M. (Russian Research Centre Kurchatov Inst., Moscow (Russian Federation))

Abstract

The paper presents the results of investigations of different graphite materials, among with the standard reactor graphite manufacturing by electrode technology and a number of advanced graphites of new generation. During the investigation of radiation stability of standard reactor graphite the basic mechanisms of radiation damage of its structure were studied. With the help of transmission electron microscopy deformations and cracking of filler and binder were detected in the vicinity of the boundaries, separating these two components. Cracking begins with crystallite splitting and ends in full fracture of boundary layers. Such process of degradation can be explained by disjoint deformations resulting from difference in growth rate of filler and binder crystallites, in its turn caused by considerable difference between their sizes. It has been concluded that radiation stability of graphite may be improved by creating such graphite materials, in which the difference in sizes of crystallites of different structure components would be the minimal possible. When developing production technology of isotropic graphite for high temperature reactors, some progress was made towards the solution of this problem. Despite considerable swelling at high temperature this type of graphite appeared to be substantially less susceptible to the degradation of the structure and to deterioration of physico-mechanical properties. In addition to graphites manufactured by tradition technology, the graphite was investigated, in which pyrocarbon precipitated from gas phase under 1000 deg. C was used as binder. Carbon precipitated in such a way was non-graphitized at high temperatures and therefore it demonstrated sharp shrinkage under irradiation at high temperature, and shrinkage rate correlated with pyrocarbon quota in graphite structure.

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key words: Gas Cooled Reactor, Nuclear Technology

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Reference:

Specialists meeting on graphite moderator lifecycle behaviour. Bath (United Kingdom). 24-27 Sep 1995.

International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna (Austria)

IAEA-TECDOC--901, pp:251-262