Honorary Zay Jeffries Lecture March 2011

Monday, March 21st, 2011

Technical Chair: David Ellis
Joint Meeting with SME Chapter 3 - Cleveland

5:45 Social/Networking
6:30 Dinner
7:30 Zay Jeffries Lecture

Politics and Errors in Selecting Alloys for Water Cooled Nuclear Plants

"Politics and Errors in Selecting Alloys for Water Cooled Nuclear Plants" by Dr. Roger Staehle

The first prototype nuclear power reactor began operating in support of the Nautilus submarine in 1951 at the reactor test site in Idaho. Shortly after starting, stress corrosion cracking was observed in the stainless steel tubing of the steam generator. This SCC seemed related to the accumulation of alkaline deposits on the secondary, outside, surfaces of the tubes. This accumulation was due in part to the hot reactor water on the inside producing superheated surfaces on the outside surfaces -- a configuration opposite to fossil boilers where the hotter side is the outside. SCC later occurred on the outside of tubing in the operating Nautilus submarine which went to sea on January 17, 1955. While this SCC seemed related to the accumulation of chloride deposits, it was the inside superheat that produced the deposits on the outside durface. These events produced great interest in SCC in water cooled nuclear plants. Studies were undertaken at the International Nickel (INCO) laboratories and at laboratories of the French Atomic Energy Center (CEA). Similar studies were undertaken at other nuclear laboratories. The studies by INCO produced data showing the effect of nickel concentration on the SCC of Fe-Ni-Cr alloys when exposed to a nominally accelerated test in boiling MgC12. Results of this work were published in 1957 and 1959. These studies showed that above 40%Ni these alloys were immune to SCC in the MgC12. At the same time as these studies were published, results from the CEA showed that these high nickel alloys would sustain SCC easily in pure water which was the actual coolant used in nuclear plants. This difference in results produced great controversy. INCO insisted that their results were relevant to nuclear environments and that the CEA data were deficient. Unfortunately, the alloy composition known as Alloy 600 was chosen by the US, France and Japan. This alloy resulted in widespread failure of steam generator tubes and structural alloys as predicted by the CEA results. Virtually all of the steam generators using Alloy 600 were eventually replaced at great cost whereas the alloy recommended by the CEA as being optimum, Alloy 800, was utilized in Canada and Germany with little resulting damage even until the present. The choice of the defective Alloy 600 over the Alloy 800 resulted from a campaign of deception. This discussion is about how these events evolved and how they could have been prevented.

Dr. Roger W. Staehle - Adjunct Professor of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota and Industrial Consultant.

Dr. Staehle is a former Dean of the Institute of Technology at the University. Previously, he was a professor of Metallurgical Engineering at The Ohio State University where he founded and directed the Fontana Corrosion Center. He is a graduate of the nuclear engineering school at Bettis laboratories sponsored by Adm. Hyman Rickover. His research  interests include predicting the corrosion performance of engineering equipment, stress corrosion cracking, passivity, and corrosion in aqueous environments. His consulting includes work for major international industries and governments in the areas of predicting corrosion performance, corrosion, and the prevention and analysis of failures. Industries for which he consults include nuclear, energy, chemical, petrochemical, food, medical, insurance, utility, construction, transportation and electronic. He consults for governments of the United States, Japan, China and Korea.

Roger STaehle was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1978 and received the Willis Rodney Whitney Award for outstanding contributions to corrosion science in 1980. At Ohio State he was the International Nickel Professor of Corrosion Science and Engineering. He was honored in 2001 by the Metallurgical Society with a full week meeting held in his honor. He is a fellow of the American Society for Metals, The National Association of Corrosion Engineers, and The Electrochemical Society. He has served on numerous boards of directors and has co-founded two companies. He is a Trustee of the Great Northern Iron Ore Properties. He has edited 25 volumes relating to corrosion and has published 160 technical papers. He is a former Editor of Corrosion Journal and of Advances in Corrosion Science and Technology.



Dr. Staehle will also be speaking at the CWRU, DMSE Colloquia on Tuesday March 22. 
"Approach to Predicting SCC from Atomistic Bases"