Abstract
Although fuel debris containing hard boron carbide (B4C) control-rods should be securely removed and kept from three reactors at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, owing to high-dose radiation we have no information of the debris' properties required to develop cutting tools. In the present study, we aim to establish a nanoindentation application measuring the mechanical properties of fuel debris which have sample size of sub-millimeters. We examined how surface polishing process and sample size affect on mechanical properties measurement of the B4C particles embedded in epoxy resin. While 1mm B4C particles polished with #240 abrasive paper had elastic modulus and hardness which were practically close to those from a literature at errors of 1.6% and 9.1%, those values of 100μm particles polished with #1500 paper were significantly lower even in the modulus at a factor of 46%. We conclude that the lowered mechanical properties in the 100μm particles were caused by the inclined sample surface made by the insufficient surface polishing process.
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