6. Outlook

Like many other industries, the nuclear environment imposes severe thermomechanical stresses on materials, but these are compounded by specific features linked to nuclear reactions, some of which are sought-after and some of which are undergone. These lead to the choice of materials with particular nuclear behaviors, or to the rejection of other materials that perform well outside irradiation. Finally, radiation induces structural transformations in all materials, with important consequences for their properties of use.

While qualitative knowledge of the mechanisms associated with these changes is satisfactory, the actual complexity of an industrial alloy means that quantitative prediction of the behavior of a new alloy under irradiation is well beyond the scope of our current scientific and engineering capabilities. Given the cost and duration of irradiation experiments,...