Beam-On Coupled Effects in Nuclear Materials—Irradiation-Slowed Corrosion, In Situ Void Swelling Detection, and Plasma-Facing Component Monitoring

Nuclear materials by definition must remain robust in highly coupled environments, where high temperatures, plasmas, stresses, magnetic fields, and corrosion can all co-exist with irradiation. Developing useful nuclear materials and predicting their failure modes therefore must rely on well-controlled experiments with as many of these coupled variables as possible. In this talk, we will review three such ongoing examples, which are pushing nuclear materials to the speed of thought. First is the discovery of irradiation-slowed corrosion in certain cases in molten salts, not previously seen when separating the irradiation and corrosion processes. Second is the in situ detection of void swelling in structural materials for fusion reactors using the I3TGS beamline at Sandia National Laboratories. Third is a new addition to an existing experiment coupling an ion beam, a linear plasma source, AND an in situ TGS system to monitor for the onset of fuzz formation on plasma-facing components. Insights learned specifically from the simultaneous coupled effects will be the focus of this talk.