Please choose your delivery country and your customer group
Two molybdenum-bearing nickel alloys, Alloy C-276 and Alloy 625, were previously identified for consideration as candidate container materials for the Canadian Nuclear Fuel Waste Management Program. Because of the paucity of data for the localized corrosion behaviour of these passive alloys under conditions that may be experienced in a disposal vault, this project was undertaken to study the crevice and pitting corrosion of Alloys C-276 and 625 in chloride solutions at elevated temperatures. Electrochemical and immersion tests have been conducted in neutral sodium chloride solutions (0.1 wt% to saturated) at 25 to 200 degrees C, in an attempt to identify the conditions under which localized corrosion occurs and to relate the actual corrosion behaviour to that expected on the basis of electrochemical studies. Cyclic polarization studies showed that the passivation breakdown potentials move rapidly to more active values with increasing temperatures. Above 100 degrees C the resistance to localized corrosion is greatly reduced. The results of the immersion tests are presented in the form of T versus (C1-) diagrams. These susceptibility diagrams suggest that there is a limiting crevice-corrosion temperature for each alloy in aerated, neutral sodium chloride solutions. Below this temperature corrosion does not occur, regardless of the chloride concentration. The values of the limiting crevice-corrosion temperatures were in the range 100 to 125 degrees C for Alloy C-276 and 100 to 115 degrees C for Alloy 625. Such values suggest that saturation of the chloride solutions by surface boiling could occur without the initiation of localized corrosion. These electrochemical results indicate that a large safety margin for susceptibility to localized corrosion might be found below 100 degrees C. (Atomindex citation 23:034150)