To study the influence of trace elements on the corrosion and hydrogen ingress in Zr-2.5 Nb pressure tube material, buttons of this alloy containing up to 0.83 at% Fe were made by arc-melting. The buttons were then annealed at 973 K for three days, furnace cooled, followed by ≈80% cold-rolling. The microstructure of cold-worked Zr-2.5 at% Nb-0.83 at% Fe (Fig. 1) contained both β-Zr and intermetallic precipitates in the α-Zr grains. The particles were 0.1 to 0.7 μm in size, with shapes ranging from spherical to ellipsoidal and often contained faults. β-Zr appeared either roughly spherical or as irregular elongated patches, often extending to several micrometres.The composition of the intermetallic particles seen in Fig. 1 was determined using Van Cappellen’s extrapolation technique for energy dispersive X-ray analysis of thin metal foils. The method was employed to avoid corrections for absorption and fluorescence via the Cliff-Lorimer equation: CA/CB = kAB · IA/IB, where CA and CB are the concentrations by weight of the elements A and B, and IA and IB are the X-ray intensities; kAB is a proportionality factor.
