Resistivity recovery in high purity iron after fission- and fusion- neutron irradiation

Abstract

A resistometric study of high-purity iron has been performed after irradiation at 20 K by 14 MeV neutrons in RTNS-II or by fission neutrons in Kyoto University Reactor (KUR). The annealing behavior of iron after fusion neutrons is very different from that after electron irradiation. The fractional recovery in stage I is much smaller and the recovery of vacancy type defects starts to occur at a much lower temperature with a lower activation energy than after electron iradiation. The difference between fission and fusion neutron irradiation, however, is much smaller; the isochronal curves for these two types of irradiation are essentially the same below 170 K. It is concluded that the local defect configuration for these two types of irradiation is similar. The induced resistivity by fusion neutrons is about a factor of 2 larger than by fission neutrons (fluence for E > 1 MeV). This is in accord with a rough estimation of the ratio of damage energy cross sections.