Nuclear material investigations by advanced analytical techniques

Advanced analytical techniques have been used to characterize nuclear materials at the Paul Scherrer Institute during the last decade. The analysed materials ranged from reactor pressure vessel (RPV) steels, Zircaloy claddings to fuel samples. The processes studied included copper cluster build up in RPV steels, corrosion, mechanical and irradiation damage behaviour of PWR and BWR cladding materials as well as fuel defect development. The used advanced techniques included muon spin resonance spectroscopy for zirconium alloy defect characterization while fuel element materials were analysed by techniques derived from neutron and X-ray scattering and absorption spectroscopy.