Microstructural analysis of candidate steels pre-selected for new advanced reactor systems

Many of candidate materials for Generation IV concept have been developed in past, however they have not been tested yet for new conditions and therefore, a huge effort must be carried out for their characterization and validation in the R&D phase. Moreover, the issue concerning the structural integrity of materials is going to have a more and more dominant role due to the degradation mechanisms, as hardening, thermal fatigue, creep, swelling, phase instability and embrittlement, which must be understood in order to estimate the component lifetime. This paper presents some interesting results on few candidate materials selected for Generation IV reactor concepts. The study is based on application of non-destructive spectroscopic techniques to investigate materials as EUROFER’97, P91 and T91.