Russian scientists at the National Nuclear Research University, funded by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research in conjunction with Tsinghua University's department of engineering physicists in Beijing, said they have developed a cost-effective modified molybdenum material that could be used to replace zirconium alloys currently used for nuclear fuel-element casings.
The new material is an “isotopically modified molybdenum” according to a Sputnik report. Like the zirconium alloys currently used, the new material is highly erosion and corrosion resistant in water and has a “low thermal capture cross-section” which defines it with regards to its interaction properties with neutron particles and the atom nucleus.
The new material has higher thermal conductivity properties than zirconium alloys, but the purpose behind the research, Sputnik said, was to find a material that did not include a hydrogen byproduct during high-heat occasions in the presence of steam, a factor that is believed to have contributed to the explosion incidents at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Generating Station in Japan in March 2011, which suffered a triple meltdown coupled with several hydrogen-fueled explosions.
One of the primary researchers in the study, Valentin Borisevich, professor of molecular physics at the National Nuclear Research University, said the breakthrough establishes “all the information necessary for the design of a separation system for the large-scale production of isotopically modified molybdenum on the basis of existing Russian technology for the separation of non-uranium isotopes in gas centrifuges.”
The new study has been published in a peer-reviewed journal, Chemical Engineering Research & Design.