Existing Experimental Facilities and Devices

• Stand KORPUS to irradiate a large amount of vessel steel samples under the conditions simulating the PWR and BWR ones;
• Devices for the in-pile mechanical tests of structural materials;
• Capsules with overheated vapor, pressurized water and boiling water to test structural materials;
• Devices to test nuclear fuel and fuel rods;
• Devices to accumulate short-lived radionuclides;
• Devices for silicon doping;

RBT Reactor Highlights:

• Accessibility of the core and experimental devices (during the reactor operation as well) due to a specific design and arrangement of standard fuel rods and control rods drivers;
• Provision of stable testing parameters during a long time;
• Various irradiation rigs and their readiness for material testing, including stand KORPUS with unique characteristics to meet strict requirements to the vessel materials testing with an intermediate annealing of irradiated samples;
• A hot cell equipped with devices for intermediate examinations of irradiated items;
• Vertical experimental large-diameter channels for silicon doping;
• Alterable core (size and arrangement) due to a very simple design and high effectiveness of control rods;

Areas of Activities

• Generation of experimental data and investigation of the changes in the properties of structural and fuel materials under irradiation of different intensity;
• Investigation of properties and justification of the performance of new materials, technologies and designs during reactor tests of nuclear engineering items under conditions simulating the real ones;
• Development of advanced methods to accumulate and produce radiochemicals with the required specific activity for engineering and medical purposes.

Trends of Research:

• Tests of different structural materials and items to study their long-term mechanical properties and strength under irradiation in a wide temperature range and different types of loading;
• Tests of VVER and PWR vessel steels under conditions simulating in a wide range the operational ones;
• Investigation of irradiation-induced creep of structural materials and fuel;
• Relaxation tests of structural materials and FA springs using different load schemes;
• Investigation of crack resistance of materials as well as delayed hydrogen cracking of Zr alloys after low-temperature irradiation;

Promising Trends of Research:

• Investigation of the performance of structural and fuel materials of different-purpose nuclear facilities (power, propulsion, test, space, etc) under the irradiation conditions simulating their standard ones (stationary and transient);
• Development of techniques and devices and conducting instrumented tests to investigate creep, long-term strength, stress relaxation and corrosion cracking of structural and fuel materials for new-generation nuclear power facilities;
• Improvement of the radionuclides production.