Developing novel techniques for hydride characterisation in irradiated Zr alloys

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Zirconium alloys are used to make the fuel rods in nuclear reactors. These rods spend their life sitting in hot, high-pressure water and hydrogen from the water can enter the zirconium and form regions of brittle zirconium hydride. These hydrides worsen the mechanical properties of the zirconium, meaning that the fuel rods need to be replaced prematurely. Over the past few decades, research into Zr-hydrides has been extensive. Even so, there are many aspects regarding fundamental Zr-H interactions that remain elusive. This is because hydrides are very hard to characterise. Hydrides are highly deformed, brittle structures with very different mechanical and physical properties to that of the Zr matrix. It is thus hard to make sure that both the Zr and hydride phases can be characterised well in a sample. This is where your project comes in: - Your first objective is to further develop hydride characterisation capability using state of the art 2D and 3D techniques before and after both proton and neutron irradiation. - The second focus of this project will be to understand and characterise the crack behaviour of these samples in 2D and 3D.