Comprehensive Nuclear Materials

Comprehensive Nuclear Materials, Five Volume Set discusses the major classes of materials suitable for usage in nuclear fission, fusion reactors and high power accelerators, and for diverse functions in fuels, cladding, moderator and control materials, structural, functional, and waste materials. The work addresses the full panorama of contemporary international research in nuclear materials, from Actinides to Zirconium alloys, from the worlds' leading scientists and engineers.

Table of Contents:
Basic Aspects of Radiation Effects in Solids / Basic Aspects of Multi-scale modelling Material Properties / Oxide fuels for LWRs and FNRs Advanced Fuels / Fuel Cladding / Nuclear Fuel Performance Modelling and Simulation Radiation effects in structural and functional materials for fission and fusion reactors Material performance and corrosion / Waste materials

About the Author :
Rudy Konings graduated from Utrecht University with an MSc in Earth Sciences in 1985. He then joined the Netherlands Energy Research Foundation ECN as researcher in the field of thermodynamics of nuclear materials and defended his PhD at the University of Amsterdam in 1990. He stayed at ECN and subsequently at NRG (Nuclear Research and Consultancy Group) working on nuclear fuel-related issues, his last role being head of the unit "Fuel, Actinides and Isotopes". In 1999 he joined the European Commission's Joint Research Centre in Karlsruhe (formerly the Institute for Transuranium Elements) and served as the head of the Nuclear Fuel Safety Unit, responsible for the nuclear fuel related research, comprising fuel synthesis, characterization, and accident behavior. Currently he is part-time professor at the Delft University of Technology, holding the chair "Chemistry of the nuclear fuel cycle". His research interests are nuclear fuels and actinide materials, with particular emphasis on high temperature chemistry and thermodynamics. He is a (co)author of more than 300 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journal and 14 book chapters, has been editor of Journal of Nuclear Materials (2009-2012), and editor-in-chief of the first two editions of Comprehensive Nuclear Materials. Dr. Todd Allen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Physics at the University of Wisconsin – Madison since 2003. Professor Allen's research expertise is in the area of materials related issues in nuclear reactors, specifically radiation damage and corrosion. Dr. Allen has established the Extreme Environment Laboratory equipped with facilities for a wide array of high temperature studies as well as the ion beam laboratory for radiation damage studies. Dr. Allen is also the Scientific Director for the Advanced Test Reactor National Scientific User Facility at Idaho National Laboratory, a position that he holds in conjunction with his faculty position at the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Stoller is currently a Distinguished Research Staff Member in the Materials Science and Technology Division of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and serves as the ORNL Program Manager for Fusion Reactor Materials for ORNL. He joined ORNL in 1984, and is actively involved in research on the effects of radiation on structural materials and fuels for nuclear energy systems. His primary expertise is in the area of computational modeling and simulation. He has authored or co-authored more than 100 publications and reports on the effects of radiation on materials, as well as having edited the proceedings of several international conferences. Shinsuke Yamanaka has been a Professor in the Division of Sustainable Energy and Environmental Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University since 1998. Prof. Yamanaka has studied the thermophysics and thermochemistry of nuclear fuel and materials. His research for the hydrogen behavior in LWR fuel cladding is notable among his achievements and he received the Young Scientist Award (1980) and the Best Paper Award (2004) from Japan's Atomic Energy Society. Prof. Yamanaka has been the program officer of Japan's Science and Technology Agency since 2005 and the visiting professor of Fukui University since 2009. He is also the associate dean of the Graduate School of Engineering at Osaka University.

Review :
From the Foreword "Nuclear materials" denotes a field of great breadth and depth, whose topics address applications and facilities that depend upon nuclear reactions. The major topics within the field are devoted to the materials science and engineering surrounding fission and fusion reactions in energy conversion reactors. Most of the rest of the field is formed of the closely related materials science needed for the effects of energetic particles on the targets and other radiation areas of charged particle accelerators and plasma devices. A more complete but also more cumbersome descriptor, thus, would be "the science and engineering of materials for fission reactors, fusion reactors, and closely related topics". In these areas the very existence of such technologies turns upon our capabilities to understand the physical behavior of materials. Performance of facilities and components to the demanding limits required are dictated by the capabilities of materials to withstand unique and aggressive environments. The unifying concept that runs through all aspects is the effect of radiation on materials. In this way the main feature is somewhat analogous to the unifying concept of elevated temperature in that part of materials science and engineering termed "high-temperature materials". Nuclear materials came into existence in the 1950s, and began to grow as an internationally recognized field of endeavor late in that decade. The beginning in this field has been attributed to presentations and discussions that occurred at the First and Second International Conferences on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, held in Geneva in 1955 and 1958. Journal of Nuclear Materials, which is the home journal for this area of materials science, was founded in 1959. The development of nuclear materials science and engineering took place in the same rapid growth time period as the parent field of materials science and engineering. And similarly to the parent field, nuclear materials draws together the formerly separate disciplines of metallurgy, solid-state physics, ceramics, and materials chemistry that were early devoted to nuclear applications. The small priesthood of first researchers in half a dozen countries has now grown to a cohort of thousands, whose home institutions are anchored in more than 40 nations. The prodigious work, Comprehensive Nuclear Materials, captures the essence and the extensive scope of the field. It provides authoritative chapters that review the full range of endeavor. In the present day of glance and click "reading" of short snippets from the Internet, this is an old-fashioned book in the best sense of the word, which will be available in both electronic and printed form. All of the main segments of the field are covered, as well as most of the specialized areas and subtopics. With well over 100 chapters, the reader finds thorough coverage on topics ranging from fundamentals of atom movements after displacement by energetic particles, to testing and engineering analysis methods of large components. All the materials classes that have main application in nuclear technologies are visited, and the most important of them are covered in exhaustive fashion. Authors of the chapters are practitioners who are at the highest level of achievement and knowledge in their respective areas. Many of these authors not only have lived through a substantial part of the history sketched above, but they themselves are the architects. Without those represented here in the author list, the field would certainly be a weaker reflection of itself. It is no small feat that so many of my distinguished colleagues could have been persuaded to join this collective endeavor and to make the real sacrifices entailed in such time consuming work. I congratulate the Editor, Rudy Konings, and the associate Editors, Roger Stoller, Todd Allen and Shinsuke Yamanaka. This book will be an important asset to young researchers entering the field as well as a valuable resource to workers engaged in the enterprise at present. Dr. Louis K. Mansur Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA May 2011