Achieving wetting in molten lead for ultrasonic applications

Abstract

The development and testing of inspection equipment is necessary for the safe deployment of advanced nuclear reactors. One proposed advanced reactor design is Westinghouse’s lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR). In this paper, the process of achieving adequate wetting for an ultrasonic under-lead viewing system is discussed and results presented. Such a device would be used for inspection in the molten lead core during reactor outages. Wider tests into the wetting of various materials in molten lead at microscale were performed using electron microscopy. The possible mechanisms and kinetics for materials wetting in lead, particularly stainless steel and nickel, are proposed and discussed.

Keywords

• Lead Fast Reactor
• Ultrasonic
• Wetting
• Molten Lead
• Core Inspection