The Segregation of Impurities and the Formation of Particles in Sodium Systems

Abstract

One of the major requirements in determining the mechanism of corrosion of stainless steel in sodium is a knowledge of the solubilities of the metallic constituents of stainless steel, i.e. iron, chromium and nickel. The possibility of interaction of these metals in sodium solution must also be considered but at present because of the difficulties experienced in determining the solubilities this aspect of the investigation has not been pursued. A number of investigations of the solubilities of these metals have been carried out but most experiments have shown an extremely large scatter within a given experiment and in the case of iron orders of magnitude difference between the concentrations found in the sodium. The measured solubility of iron at 500^°C, for example, varies from 0.01 (1) to about 15 ppm.

This work was performed under the auspices of the U. S. Atomic Energy Commission.