This textbook was first conceived from our observation that there had been no suit­able textbook that caters towards the needs of undergraduate students in nuclear engineering for learning about nuclear reactor materials from materials science perspective. We have come across some books which are heavy on the ‘nitty gritty’ details that assume significant prior knowledge of basics of materials science, whereas others miss to highlight important materials science principles for stu­dents’ perspective to grow into the field of nuclear materials. Moreover, most of them are out-of-print. Thus, the book has primarily been written for undergraduate students; however it can also be used by beginning graduate students and profes­sionals who are interested in learning about nuclear materials from a rudimentary level but have very little background in materials science. We also hope that materi­als science and engineering (MSE) students will take delight into learning the topics if they wish to enter the nuclear materials field even though they may be quite conversed with the contents of some of the chapters involving materials sci­ence fundamentals.

Instructors who teach nuclear materials always have a difficult task of teaching the fundamentals of nuclear materials. Origin of the contents of the book has roots in the course on Nuclear Materials taught during more than three decades by the senior author (KLM) at NC State and recent teaching by the co-author (IC) at the University of Idaho. Copies taken of various chapters from different books have been used as course notes with various references that the students found not very convenient especially since only a few copies are available in the library. In addition, they were found to be disjointed especially in the varied nomenclatures used by different authors.

It has been our experience that many of the nuclear engineering students find that it is required to repeat basic materials science aspects including crystal struc­tures especially because hcp and fluorite structures are not well covered in the first course on Elements of Materials Science. Along with all basic phenomena of mate­rials science, the book deals with dislocation theory in more detail because of the significance of dislocations in the understanding of radiation damage and radiation effects. During the class teaching, we emphasize from the very beginning the sig­nificance of these fundamental materials science principles in our ability to be able

to predict/estimate effects of radiation using detailed quantitative microstructural features.

Following an introductory chapter on Nuclear Reactor Systems and Fundamen­tals, Chapter 2 starts with Crystal Structure followed by Crystal Imperfections (2.2) and Diffusion in Solids (2.3). Radiation Damage fundamentals are covered in Chapter 3 with the major aim of dpa (displacements per atom) calculation. Disloca­tion Theory comprises the Chapter 4 while Mechanical Properties, Fracture, Fatigue, Creep; some fundamentals of thermophysical properties; and Corrosion and SCC are all included in Chapter 5. Chapter 6 covers both Radiation Effects and Reactor Materials while the book is concluded with the Chapter 7 on Reactor Fuels. For first year graduate course, these sections were followed up with a term-long project on topics related to materials issues in reactor systems with in-class presen­tations by the students. Generally, we did not restrict on the students’ selection of topics; a list given in the semester-beginning as well as the students’ choice but on materials issues related to reactor applications.

We are not saying that this book is going to be a ‘panacea’ for curing all the prob­lems faced by these instructors. Also, we would like to accept that many issues of importance to nuclear field remained untouched because we did not wish the book to be so voluminous making it difficult to cover the subject matter in a single semester. Moreover, many of the aspects such as radiation creep, embrittlement of pressure vessel steels, etc., were dealt in a rather simplistic fashion albeit they have extensive pedagogic advantages. Our experience indicated that even the contents of chapters included here are quite large for a one-semester course and often the last chapters on reactor materials and fuels are covered rather briefly. For making the course manageable for one semester, we could not include/cover phase diagrams and phase transformations in this course and the text.

We would like to gratefully acknowledge several past and present colleagues and students whose work has been incorporated in this book in one way or the other. Special thanks go to Mr. Brian Marple for giving inputs on the Gen-III+ reactors for Chapter 1. We would also like to acknowledge the support of Drs. Louis Mansur, Donald Olander, and Sheikh T Mahmood for supporting our book proposal at the early stage. The authors are indebted to many authors and publishers who gave consent to the reproduction of appropriate figures etc. We would like to also acknowledge incredible efforts by Anja Tschortner of Wiley-VCH for driving us to complete the book and we commend her sustained efforts in this regard. Acknow­ledgements are due to our current students and colleagues who went through the proofs for corrections and many comments. Finally, the book would not have been written without the much needed emotional support of our families, in particular to our spouses, Ratnaveni Murty and Mohar B. Charit.

K. Linga Murty Indrajit Charit May 5, 2012