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This report documents the results of the L-Basin Corrosion Surveillance Program for the fiscal year 2004. Test coupons were removed from the basin on February 12, 2004, shipped to Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL), and visually examined in a contaminated laboratory hood. Selected coupons were metallurgically characterized to establish the extent of general corrosion and pitting. Pitting was observed on galvanically coupled and on intentionally creviced coupons, thus demonstrating that localized concentration cells were formed during the exposure period. In these cases, the susceptibility to pitting was not attributed to aggressive basin water chemistry but to localized conditions (intentional crevices and galvanic coupling) that allowed the development of oxygen and/or metal ion concentration cells that produced locally aggressive waters. General oxidation was also observed on all of the coupons with localized corrosion observed on some of the coupons. These coupons were not pretreated to produce a protective oxide layer prior to exposure in the basin water. Non-protected coupons are more susceptible to corrosion than fuel cladding which has developed a protective oxide layer from high temperature reactor operations. However, the oxide on spent nuclear fuel (SNF) stored in L-Basin is not necessarily in pristine condition. Some of the oxide may …

The Yucca Mountain site was recommended by the President to be a geological repository for commercial spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. The multi-barrier approach was adopted for assessing and predicting system behavior, including both natural barriers and engineered barriers. A major component of the long-term strategy for safe disposal of nuclear waste is first to completely isolate the radionuclides in waste packages for long times and then to greatly retard the egress and transport of radionuclides from penetrated packages. The goal of the Materials Performance Targeted Thrust program is to further enhance the understanding of the role of engineered barriers in waste isolation. In addition, the Thrust will explore technical enhancements and seek to offer improvements in materials costs and reliability.

The 2004 visual inspection of four Uruguay nuclear fuel assemblies stored in L-Basin was completed. This was the third inspection of this wet stored fuel since its arrival in the summer of 1998. Visual inspection photographs of the fuel from the previous and the recent inspections were compared and no evidence of significant corrosion was found on the individual fuel plate photographs. Fuel plates that showed areas of pitting in the cladding during the original receipt inspection were also identified during the 2004 inspection. However, a few pits were found on the non-fuel aluminum clamping plates that were not visible during the original and 2001 inspections.