Copper precipitate hardening of irradiated RPV materials and implications on the superposition law and re-irradiation kinetics

Copper is known to play an important role in irradiation hardening and embrittlement of RPV materials. This is particularly true for old vessels. Indeed, while the Cu-content is low (<0.1%) in modern RPV materials, it often exceeded 0.15% in older vessels. Within the RADAMO irradiation program aiming to provide a reliable and extensive (chemistry, heat treatments, fluence, irradiation temperature) databank to investigate irradiation-induced hardening of RPV materials, we irradiated steels and welds with copper contents ranging from 0.06 to 0.31% at 300 and 265 °C. Experiments on re-irradiation after annealing were also performed to investigate the re-irradiation kinetics. It is found that copper plays a role in the very early stage of irradiation but saturates quite rapidly. The peak hardening is in agreement with the ageing data. Considering a two-component model, the linear superposition law provides the most appropriate one to rationalize the experimental data including re-irradiation path.