Comments on author’s reply to “Review of the thermodynamic basis for models of delayed hydride cracking rate in zirconium alloys”, M.P. Puls in J. Nucl. Mater. 393 (2009) 350–367

This work comments on Kim’s rebuttal of this authors’ critical review that is cited in the title of this paper. The author shows that Kim’s rebuttal of the author’s review is based on essentially the same physical misconceptions concerning the driving force for DHC rate in the Dutton–Puls model as are given in Kim’s original papers. The author shows that his previous criticisms of Kim’s model as well as the author’s defense of the correctness of the thermodynamic basis of the various versions of the Dutton–Puls models have been validated. In contradistinction, the author shows that it is Kim’s DHC model that has a faulty thermodynamic basis and, therefore, is not viable in underpinning the physical understanding of DHC rate. To make the reasons for these conclusions clearer than given previously, the author has attached an appendix to these comments that provides detailed steps of the mathematical derivations of the various versions of the Dutton–Puls models. This work also provides an interpretation of the results of the experiments of Kammenzind et al. (2000) [5] that shows that these results can be interpreted according to the Dutton–Puls mechanism for hydride growth. Thus the results of the Kammenzind and co-workers’ tests do not provide support, as Kim claims, that a stress gradient in a closed system cannot cause hydrogen concentration redistribution.