Characterization of neutron irradiation damage in zirconium alloys—an international “round-robin” experiment
Over the past few years there has been disagreement between laboratories on the exact nature of the damage in irradiated zirconium alloys. The main disagreement has centred on whether or not dislocation loops with c-component Burgers' vectors are formed during the irradiation. Since the presence of c-component loops was required in one of the current theories of irradiation growth and is considered in many other models, it was desirable to clear up this point and others relating to the nature of the damage such as loop size, loop concentration and the nature of the loop population, i.e. vacancy or interstitial. To this end a ‘round-robin’ series of transmission electron microscopy (TEM) examinations of neutron irradiated zirconium alloys was organized and the results are reported herein.The participants in the ‘round-robin’ included laboratories who had previously claimed to have seen evidence for c-component damage. The materials examined included zirconium and Zircaloy-2 irradiated at temperatures from 250-400°C, Table 1, the materials irradiated at 400°C providing samples with dislocation loops large enough to determine the interstitial/vacancy nature by inside/outside contrast techniques.