It is difficult to imagine a world without concrete. This material has been fundamental in the history of humanity and remains a pillar in modern construction. Although we are exploring more sustainable alternatives such as wood, there are constructions in which concrete remains the clear protagonist. An example is nuclear power plants, which need to be resistant and well isolated.
And a new study has investigated the effect of nuclear radiation on concrete. The most surprising thing is that radiation bombardment has an effect … curative.
The study. Researchers at the University of Tokyo were not looking for a self -realistic cement or concrete, but the impact of nuclear radiation on concrete. Being the main structural material and armor in nuclear centrals and reactors, there is a concern about how radiation influences the aging of that armor.
Specifically, the objective was to verify what is the impact on quartz, a common material in the rock that is used in the mixture of concrete, regardless of the part of the world in which that mixture is manufactured, and measure the impact on quartz It can help us understand how radiation affects the structure of the building. The good news is that, in theory, these concrete structures are more stable in the long term of what was believed, since radiation induces relaxation processes in quartz that allow some recovery of their internal structure.
Irradia the quartz. To carry out the study, the effects of the irradiation of neutrons in different types of quartz were investigated. The synthetic, metacuarcita, sandstone and granodiorite quartz were irradiated at a temperature between 45 and 62 degrees Celsius, with a damage by displaced atom that ranged between 0.01 and 0.23 units.
IPPEI Maruyama is one of those responsible for the investigation and comments that the flow of neutron radiation “distorts the crystalline structure, causing amorphization and expansion.” This would be something negative because it implies that the material is not stable, but the surprising thing is that, due to the role of silicon and oxygen within the quartz grains, a healing process is triggered that mitigates the expansion of the volume of the material induced by Radiation.
Self -repair. “At the same time there is a phenomenon in which distorted crystals recover and the expansion decreases,” says Maruyama. This is something that depends on the size of mineral crystals within concrete. For example, the largest grains showed a lower expansion, so the degradation of the concrete, which is one of the current concerns when building and maintaining nuclear centrals, could be less severe than what was thought.
Likewise, the researcher confirms that “a lower radiation rate allows more time for self -reparation”, allowing nuclear energy plants to “operate safely for longer periods of time” of which it was expected initially.
Next steps. There are still questions to be resolved, since the same team comments that they have a task ahead. The University of Tokyo’s team has been studying the impact of radiation on concrete since 2008, but confirms that it is an expensive field of study, so carrying out extensive research is not easy.
Now, with this finding, Maruyama is confident that they will continue to explore the impact of nuclear radiation beyond quartz to, for example, see if that expansion phenomenon occurs in other minerals that make up the concrete. The objective is not only to predict how cracks are formed due to the expansion of minerals that are being bombarded by radiation, but how to select the best materials to create a much more resistant concrete for future nuclear energy plants.
Beyond the centrals. We will have to see the next steps of the researchers to strengthen those first opinions of the study, but it is evident that getting a self -realistic concrete is an obsession. Due to CO2 emissions during its production, that its maintenance is very expensive since it is ending world -sand reserves, having a material that repairs itself is something that different equipment throughout the planet has been investigating for years.
And progress has been made, such as mixtures with sugar or coffee that allow some self -repair of concrete. We will see, yes, what takes to use that new concrete on a day -to -day basis.
Image | SAM300292
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