Corrosion mechanism of iron in liquid uranium hexafluoride environment

M. Achour (1) , L. Martinelli (2) , S. Chatain (2) , L. Jouffret (3) , M. Dubois (3) , P. Bonnet (3) , A. Selmi (4) , B. Morel (4) , S. Delpech (5)

1 LBP - Laboratoire de Biophotonique et Pharmacologie - UMR 7213
2 CEA-DES (ex-DEN) - CEA-Direction des Energies (ex-Direction de l'Energie Nucléaire)
3 ICCF - Institut de Chimie de Clermont-Ferrand
4 AREVA (FRANCE)
5 IPNO - Institut de Physique Nucléaire d'Orsay

Dedicated and reliable experimental setup had been designed and experiments had been carried out in order to perform corrosion experiments on pure iron in liquid uranium hexafluoride (UF$_6$) at 80°C and 3 bars. Three corrosion tests have been carried out from several hundred to almost a thousand hours. No uniform corrosion has been observed for early stages samples with nodule-facies consisting in FeF$_2$ and UF$_x$ (with 4

Keywords: Corrosion; mechanism; iron; liquid; uranium; hexafluoride; environment

Domains: Nuclear Experiment [nucl-ex]; Nuclear Theory [nucl-th]

M. Achour, L. Martinelli, S. Chatain, L. Jouffret, M. Dubois, et al.. Corrosion mechanism of iron in liquid uranium hexafluoride environment. EUROCORR 2016 - European Corrosion Congress, Sep 2016, Montpellier, France. ⟨hal-02442237⟩