Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Achieving wetting in molten lead for ultrasonic applications

  • Received : 2023.08.08
  • Accepted : 2023.10.15
  • Published : 2024.02.25
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Abstract

The development and testing of inspection equipment is necessary for the safe deployment of advanced nuclear reactors. One proposed advanced reactor design is Westinghouse's lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR). In this paper, the process of achieving adequate wetting for an ultrasonic under-lead viewing system is discussed and results presented. Such a device would be used for inspection in the molten lead core during reactor outages. Wider tests into the wetting of various materials in molten lead at microscale were performed using electron microscopy. The possible mechanisms and kinetics for materials wetting in lead, particularly stainless steel and nickel, are proposed and discussed.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge practical assistance and contributions to the work from the following; Richard Todd (Ionix), Adrian Crimp, Jake Rusby (Univ. Bristol Physics Workshop), Elen Williams, Laurie Crouch (NNL). The work shown in this paper was performed under the Advanced Modular Reactor programme.

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