Recent progress in understanding reactor pressure vessel steel embrittlement

Abstract This paper reviews the current understanding of the basic mechanisms of irradiation embrittlement in reactor pressure vessel steels. Radiation enhanced diffusiona at operating temperatures around 290°C leads to the formation of various ultrafine scale hardening phases, including copper rich and copper catalysed manganese-nickel rich precipitates. Other nanofeatures that do not require copper, so-called matrix defects, include alloy phosphides and carbonitrides as well as defect cluster-solute complexes. Matrix defects that are thermally unstable (anneal) under irradiation play a very important role in mediating flux and temperature effects. The balance of features depends on the composition of the steel and the irradiation conditions. Copper enriched phases, which are the dominant embrittling feature in alloys containing significant trace quantities of this element, are fairly well understood. In contrast, the detailed identity and etiology of the matrix defects and manganese-nickel rich phases that may form in very low copper steels has not yet been established. Embrittlement of typical (Mn-Mo-Ni) pressure vessel steels, manifested as shifts in Charpy V-notch transition temperature, can generally be related to yield stress increases. Yield stress increases from copper rich precipitates are consistent with predictions using defect-obstacle interaction theory coupled with a new model for superposition of the hardening from both pre- and post-irradiation sources of strength. Details of the strengthening contributions from the other irradiation features are not as well established, but appear to be reasonably consistent with theory. These concepts have led to the development of thermodynamic-kinetic-micromechanical models that are broadly consistent with experiment, and rationalize the highly synergistic effects of important irradiation (e.g., temperature, flux, fluence) and metallurgical (e.g., copper, nickel, manganese, phosphorous and heat treatment) variables on both irradiation hardening and hardening recovery during post-irradiation annealing. Open questions can be addressed with a hierarchy of new theoretical and experimental tools, which range from atomistic modeling to tomographic methods of observing the sequence-of-events leading to fracture. Advanced microstructural evolution, microstructure-property and micromechanical models, validated and calibrated by well designed experiments, will greatly enhance our ability to predict pressure vessel embrittlement and to resolve out-standing technical issues.