Seawater immersion tests of irradiated Zircaloy-2 cladding tube

ジルカロイ-2被覆管に対する海水浸漬試験

関尾 佳弘  ; 山県 一郎 ; 山下 真一郎   ; 井上 賢紀 ; 前田 宏治  

Sekio, Yoshihiro; Yamagata, Ichiro; Yamashita, Shinichiro; Inoue, Masaki; Maeda, Koji

福島第一原子力発電所では、東日本大震災による電源喪失に伴い、使用済燃料プール内の燃料を冷却するために海水が注入された。これらの燃料集合体の健全性評価に資するため、燃料集合体部材であるジルカロイ-2被覆管の腐食挙動や強度特性に及ぼす塩化物イオン等の影響を評価する目的で、ジルカロイ-2燃料被覆管の照射材及び非照射材に対して海水(人工海水及び天然海水)を用いた約1,000時間までの浸漬試験及び浸漬後の引張試験を実施した。これらの結果、照射の有無や海水の違いによらず、材料表面の腐食やジルカロイ-2被覆管の強度特性の劣化が生じなかったことから、腐食挙動や強度特性に及ぼす塩化物イオン等(実海水特有成分)の影響は小さいと考えられる。

In the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant accident, seawater was temporarily injected into the spent fuel pools since water cooling and feeding functions were lost. For fuel assemblies which experienced seawater immersion, surface corrosion due to seawater constituents and the resultant degradation of mechanical property are of concern. Therefore, in order to assess the integrity of fuel assemblies (especially cladding tubes), the effects of seawater immersion on corrosion behavior and mechanical properties for as-recieved and irradiated Zircaloy-2 cladding tubes were investigated in the present study. As a result, no obvious surface corrosion and no significant degradation in the tensile strength property were observed after both artificial and natural seawater immersion tests for both steels. This suggests that the effects of seawater immersions on corrosion behavior and mechanical property (especially tensile property) for Zircaloy-2 cladding tubes are probably negligible.