Degradation of HT9 under simultaneous ion beam irradiation and liquid metal corrosion

A potentially promising coolant/structural material pair for a liquid-metal-cooled fast reactors is lead bismuth eutectic (LBE) coolant with the ferritic/martensitic steel HT9. The challenge of deploying LBE, however, is the corrosive environment it creates for structural materials. This corrosion can be mitigated with precise oxygen content control in the LBE to allow for the growth of passive protective oxide layers on the surface of the steel. In this paper, results are reported from the Irradiation Corrosion Experiment II (ICE-II), which allowed the simultaneous irradiation of a sample while in contact with LBE. It was found that a characteristic multilayer structure with an outer Fe3O4 oxide and inner FeCr2O4 spinel was grown and the oxidation was significantly larger in the irradiated region when compared to the region that was only exposed to LBE corrosion. Possible mechanisms are discussed to help understand this irradiation enhanced corrosion behavior.