Activity gradient driven mass transport in molten fluoride salt medium

The molten salt-cooled reactor concept has garnered significant interest and one of the current challenges limiting the deployment of these reactor concepts is the complex corrosion phenomenon observed in molten salt environments. One of these phenomena is activity gradient mass transport, which has been shown to affect dissimilar materials submerged in the same salt medium even when best efforts have been made to electrically isolate dissimilar materials from one another. This mechanism while shown experimentally, has not been predictively studied through a modeling approach. In this study, activity gradients in several 316L-X materials systems have been modeled and the mass transport predicted by the model has been confirmed through static isothermal corrosion testing in a molten fluoride salt medium.

Automated summary

This study models the activity gradient mass transport in various 316L-X material systems and confirms the predicted mass transport through corrosion testing in a molten fluoride salt medium, providing insights into a mechanism of complex corrosion phenomena observed in molten salt-cooled reactors.