Radiation Effects in Additive Manufactured Steels

Ferritic martensitic (FM) steels are candidate materials for high-dose applications in advanced nuclear reactor power applications due to their low swelling rates. FM steels are known to degrade in these high dose applications due to irradiation hardening, helium embrittlement, and swelling. The use of additive manufacturing, including directed energy deposition (DED) techniques, is gaining increasing acceptance for consideration in the production of commercial nuclear reactor components. However, parallels with, or tangent to, the commonly identified degradation modes in FM steels have yet to be demonstrated for DED material. In this project, we study the radiation effects of HT-9 produced using powder-blown laser DED at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (MDF) and then irradiated at the Michigan Ion Beam Laboratory (MIBL).