Unique Research Asset for Nuclear Innovative Applications

Objective

Materials response to harsh irradiation, temperature and corrosive media is preventing the successful exploitation of innovative nuclear fusion, advanced fission technologies for sustainable energy production and human exploration of faraway planets. Specifically, materials degradation and early failures hinder these scientific longstanding endeavours. The current paradigm to tackle these issues is to implement mitigating solutions or to characterise the surrounding environment to understand failure initiation and propagation. URÅNIA shifts this approach by focusing directly on understanding the incubation stage prior to initiation events. In this view, I will: i) create a novel gold standard to reveal the incubation stage of materials degradation phenomena; ii) reveal precursors affecting the transition from incubation to initiation, iii) link precursors nanoscale effect to macroscopic degradation behaviour. I want to accelerate the development of innovative nuclear technologies thanks to a new approach towards materials degradation investigation leveraging a combination of hierarchical analyses and interdisciplinary competences across nuclear, chemistry, materials science and engineering. URÅNIA ground breaking idea is to: 1. Create a system where I can measure time to initiation in controlled stress corrosion cracking (SCC) and pyrophoricity experiments. 2. Freeze at specific instants the incubation to initiation transition. 3. Reveal precursors using isotopic tracers with advanced microscopy. 4. Link precursors role at the nanoscale to the resulting macroscale effect using a neural network tool. 5. Compare precursors role in unirradiated and irradiated materials to elucidate the reasons for potentially enhanced SCC. URÅNIA changes the approach to investigate materials degradation, unlocking the development of innovative nuclear materials and potentially aiding materials design in all those key forefront technologies needed in energy and space.