Rosatom fuel development company TVEL announced it had signed a memorandum of understanding to work in the Czech Republic on materials science studies and research. The work will be done at the Řež Research Center.
Czech scientists will provide experiments on irradiation of nuclear construction materials in the CVŘ research reactor and also accomplish pre-irradiation and post-irradiation studies, Rosatom said.
The research will focus on behavior studies of construction materials of nuclear fuel assemblies including zirconium, chrome-nickel and steel alloys, as well as some other prominent materials. Such studies are provided in order to validate operational characteristics of Russian-made nuclear fuel.
“Řež research center has highly professional staff and up-to-date infrastructure for materials science studies for nuclear industry. Considering materials of TVEL fuel assemblies, we are interested in studying their corrosion resistance, creep flow, structural properties, fatigue performance, experiments for dry storage and testing at supercritical water parameters. Besides, the studies data from a major foreign field-specific research center, not belonging to the Russian nuclear industry, will be an additional confirmation of our products quality,” Alexander Ugryumov, Vice-President for Research and Development at TVEL JSC, commented.
CVŘ infrastructure includes a light water research reactor, technological water loops modeling conditions of various reactor types, hot and medium-hot cells for irradiated materials analysis and also a number of certified laboratories for mechanical and structural research of irradiated and non-irradiated materials.