Thermogravimetric analysis of the beryllium/steam reaction

In view of the safety assessment of new fusion reactor designs, kinetic data are needed on the beryllium/steam reaction. Therefore, thermogravimetric analysis was used to determine the reactivity of beryllium in steam as a function of temperature, irradiation history and porosity of the samples. To this purpose, reference unirradiated S-200 VHP beryllium samples were compared with specimens irradiated in the BR2 reactor up to fast neutron fluences (E>1 MeV) of respectively 1.6×1021 n cm−2 (resulting in a helium content of 300 appm He and a theoretical density of 99.9%) and 4×1022 n cm−2 (21 000 appm He, 97.2% theoretical density). Kinetics were parabolic for all tested beryllium types at 600°C. At 700°C, kinetics were parabolic for the unirradiated and irradiated 99.9% dense beryllium, and accelerating/linear for the irradiated 97.2% material. At 800°C, all samples showed accelerating/linear behaviour. There was no influence of porosity on the reaction rate of beryllium in steam within the limited investigated density range, except at 700°C, where the measured reaction rate for the irradiated 97.2% dense samples is an order of magnitude higher than for the irradiated 99.9% dense specimens.