Objectives

Under the guidance of the Nuclear Science Committee (NSC) and under the mandate of the Working Party on Scientific Issues of Advanced Fuel Cycles (WPFC), the objective of the expert group is to conduct joint and comparative studies to support the development, selection and characterisation of innovative structural materials that can be implemented in advanced nuclear fuel cycles, under extreme conditions such as high temperature, high dose rate, and corrosive chemical environment and long service lifetime.

The objectives of the expert group are to:

• provide a state-of-the-art assessment of specific areas to be considered as priority areas of research
• identify the areas where experimental protocols and standards are needed and where the share of available experimental installations could be possible
• identify existing databases
• organise the next in a series of workshops on structural materials for innovative nuclear systems (SMINS).

The expert group works particularly closely with the Working Party on Multi-scale Modelling of Fuels and Structural Materials for Nuclear Systems (WPMM).

Scope

Consistent with the above objectives, the scope of the expert group includes:

• state-of-the-art assessment of specific areas to be considered as priority areas of research
  • identification of system requirements for advanced reactors, identification of advanced materials being studied to meet the system requirements, and identification of readiness level of each of the materials.
  • identification of novel material pathways that could significantly improve material performance in advanced nuclear systems
• experimental protocols and standards and share of available experimental installations
  • identification and elaboration of areas where experimental protocols and standards are needed
  • identification of challenge issues, both in modelling and experimentation, as well as round-robin experiments to verify the consistency of results across international test programs
  • identification of existing and required experimental facilities, as well as the potential for collaborative research using existing experimental installations
• common experimental database
  • identification of existing databases and their ownership and accessibility.