GEneration iv Materials MAturity

ended

GEMMA Project addresses the action NFRP 5 of the 2015 EU call: “Materials research for Generation-IV reactors”, which has the scope to investigate the areas where further research and innovation is needed to reach technological maturity in the frame of the development of Generation IV reactor materials. The proposal is prepared under the auspices of the Joint Program on Nuclear Materials of the European Energy Research Alliance (EERA JPNM). It is based on the contents of seven Pilot Projects recently approved by EERA JPNM dealing with environmental characterizations of materials and welds, numerical modeling accompanied by dedicated experiments and development of mitigation measures towards materials degradation. The general objective of GEMMA Project is to qualify and codify the selected structural materials for the construction of Generation IV reactors, as envisaged within the European Sustainable Nuclear Industrial Initiative (ESNII). The structural materials, to be considered in the GEMMA project, are those selected by the designers of the ESNII systems for fuel cladding and, in some cases, for the main vessel and the internals. Their qualification means that their resistance to harsh exposure conditions of high temperature, highly corrosive environment and intense flux of fast neutrons, will be experimentally verified and/or numerically modelled. The applicability of materials to the reactors' construction implies also that relevant welded joints will be tested as well as corrosion protection treatments. Even the corrosion resistance of new Alumina Forming Alloy steels and surface treatments will be tested in representative conditions. The codification of the project results entails that a large amount of experimental data will be generated and that such data will be transformed to useful rules, for system and component designers, to be expressed in a suitable way for inclusion in the Design Rules of the RCC-MRx code.