ChemInform Abstract: Heavy‐Ion Damage in Solids

Abstract

Much of the impetus for studying irradiation damage in solids stems from the demands of nuclear technology. The radiation fields encountered in all critical areas of present and projected reactors present an intensely hostile environment. At typical reactor operating temperatures a whole range of largely irreversible and deleterious effects may occur in reactor components—creep, swelling, embrittlement, sputtering etc.—which lead to serious degredation in properties and impose severe limitations on reactor design. Perhaps the best-known example is radiation-induced void swelling, originally discovered in studies of metal fuel cladding by Cawthorne and Fulton (Ca 67), and subsequently found to be a major potential problem in structural components, which has had enormous implications in metallurgical design criteria for fast reactors. It has been estimated that the cost benefit of designing void-resistant low-swelling alloys for use in reactors into the next century is more than $10 billion!