• Question: Why do you have to place materials under extreme conditions?

    Asked by anon-201342 to Sophia, Sarah, Meirin on 13 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Meirin Oan Evans

      Meirin Oan Evans answered on 13 Mar 2019:

      George, another scientist in the Nuclear Zone, is more of an expert on this than me. Maybe you could try asking him? If not, I could try answer if you’d rather?

    • Photo: Sarah O'Sullivan

      Sarah O'Sullivan answered on 14 Mar 2019:

      One reason is to test how they behave under those conditions. Nuclear reactors of both fission and fusion kind are really extreme places to be, there’s high temperatures and radioactive materials and plasmas in fusion reactors. These will all effect the materials being used so we need to know those materials will work in those conditions and not fail too easily. I put my materials under extreme conditions to try to replicate the reaction conditions that would occur during a nuclear loss of coolant accident but obviously I can’t do that by making an actual nuclear accident so I use other extremes of conditions to achieve the end result

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