Variability of In-Reactor Diametral Deformation for Zr-2.5Nb Pressure Tubing
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The diametral expansion of pressure tubes in CANDU™ reactors due to irradiation creep and growth is an important property that may limit the useful life of the tubes. Measurements accumulated over many years have shown that there is considerable variability in diametral strain rates between tubes. There is also considerable variability in the creep and growth response as a function of axial location, which is due to axial variations in operating temperature and flux, and to a gradual change in grain structure and crystallographic texture from one end of the tube to the other. The net effect is that pressure tubes tend to deform at a faster rate when the back end of the tube (i.e., the end leaving the extrusion press last) is installed at the fuel-channel outlet. The primary cause of the difference in microstructure along a given tube is the temperature change during the extrusion process. This end-to-end variation itself varies from tube to tube, due to variations in extrusion conditions from one extrusion run to the next, and also due to variations in ingot chemistry and billet processing. A semiempirical predictive model has been developed previously to represent the irradiation creep and growth behavior of a generic pressure tube, with a standardized microstructure, as a function of temperature and neutron flux. The diametral strain data from one hundred and twenty-five Zr-2.5Nb pressure tubes have been compared with the model. Deviations from predicted behavior have been correlated with the available microstructure, chemistry, and manufacturing data. Apart from obvious microstructural dependencies of diametral strain, such as the relationship with texture, grain structure is also a significant parameter that varies considerably from tube to tube and correlates strongly with diametral strain. The textures and grain structures, themselves, are related to manufacturing conditions (billet processing, extrusion pressures, temperatures, and soak times) and also, to some extent, on the impurity content of the material (due to the modifying effects on the Zr-Nb phase diagram).
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".