Crevice Corrosion Behavior of Candidate Nuclear Waste Container Materials in Repository Environment

Alloy 22 (UNS N06022) and Ti Grade 7 (UNS R52400) have been proposed as the corrosion resistant materials for fabricating the waste package outer barrier and the drip shield, respectively for the proposed nuclear waste repository Yucca Mountain Project. In this work, the susceptibility of welded and annealed Alloy 22 (N06022) and Ti Grade 7 (UNS R52400) to crevice corrosion was studied by the Multiple Crevice Assembly (ASTM G78) method combined with surface morphological observation after four and eight weeks of exposure to the Basic Saturated Water (BSW-12) in a temperature range from 60 to 105 C. The susceptibility of the materials to crevice corrosion was evaluated based on the appearance of crevice attack underneath the crevice formers and the weight loss data. The results showed that, after exposed to BSW-12 for four and eight weeks, no obvious crevice attack was observed on these materials. The descaled weight loss increased with the increase in temperature for all materials. The weight loss, however, is believed to be caused by general corrosion, rather than crevice corrosion. There was no significant difference between the annealed and welded materials either. On the other hand, to conclude that these materials are immune to crevice corrosion in BSW-12 will require longer term testing