Ferritic/martensitic steels – overview of recent results

Considerable research work has been conducted on the ferritic/martensitic steels since the last International Conference on Fusion Reactor Materials in 1999. Since only a limited amount of that work can be reviewed in this paper, four areas will be emphasized: (1) the international collaboration under the auspices of the International Energy Agency (IEA) to address potential problems with ferritic/martensitic steels and to prove their feasibility for fusion, (2) the major uncertainty that remains concerning the effect of transmutation helium on mechanical properties of the steels when irradiated in a fusion neutron environment, (3) development of new reduced-activation steels beyond the F82H and JLF-1 steels studied in the IEA collaboration, and (4) work directed at developing oxide dispersion-strengthened steels for operation above 650 °C.