PNNL

Abstract

These proceedings contain the papers presented at the symposia on Microstructural Processes in Irradiated Materials (MPIM) and Characterization of Nuclear Reactor Materials and Components with Neutron and Synchrotron Radiation that were held in San Diego, California, USA, from February 27 to March 3, 2011, as part of the 2011 TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition. The 2011 MPIM symposium, which is the fifth in a series of symposia held every two years, had been proposed for a wide range of topics involving nuclear structural and fuel materials. The original contributions for the topics include experimental and modeling studies on microstructural evolution, defect production processes, radiation-induced phase stability and precipitation, mechanical properties, damage processes in nuclear fuels and fuel related materials, and fundamentals and irradiation performance of non-metallic materials. As in the earlier symposia, a strong emphasis was placed on the connections between the results of modeling studies on point defect and impurity properties, damage accumulation and those of advanced experimental characterization for the microstructural evolution of irradiated or deformed materials. A wide variety of high temperature materials, such as the ferritic–martensitic alloys, advanced oxide dispersion alloys, and zirconium and tungsten alloys were among the primary materials widely studied, while the topics on fuel materials and ceramics were added to the main theme. The MPIM symposium set new records in numbers of presentations and publications with a total of 100 presentations, including 8 invited talks delivered in the 4 day symposium. In this issue 28 papers appear in addition to the 6 papers from the sister symposium. This issue includes contributions from the symposium on Characterization of Nuclear Reactor Materials and Components with Neutron and Synchrotron Radiation. Neutron and synchrotron radiation sources offer new opportunities to advance the fundamental understanding of nuclear reactor materials, fuels and engineering components. A variety of advanced characterization tools including diffraction, imaging and spectroscopy have become available to allow measurements of microstructure and strain over a range of time and length scales and under in situ conditions including stress, temperature and irradiation. This session featured over 30 technical presentations and 6 invited speakers highlighting recent experimental efforts and future prospects to characterized irradiated materials, nuclear reactor components and material systems for reactor application using neutron and synchrotron radiation techniques.