Neutron and /γ Radiolysis of Water up to Supercritical Conditions. 1. /γ Yields for H 2 , H • Atom, and Hydrated Electron Dorota Janik, Ireneusz Janik, and David M. Bartels* Radiation Laboratory, UniVersity of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 ReceiVed: March 3, 2007; In Final Form: June 7, 2007 Yields for H 2 ,H • atom, and hydrated electron production in /γ radiolysis of water have been measured from room temperature up to 400 °C on a 250 bar isobar, and also as a function of pressure (density) at 380 and 400 °C. Radiolysis was carried out using a beam of 2-3 MeV electrons from a van de Graaff accelerator, and detection was by mass spectrometer analysis of gases sparged from the irradiated water. N 2 O was used as a specific scavenger for hydrated electrons giving N 2 as product. Ethanol-d 6 was used to scavenge H • atoms, giving HD as a stable product. It is found that the hydrated electron yield decreases and the H • atom yield increases dramatically at lower densities in supercritical water, and the overall escape yield increases. The yield of molecular H 2 increases with temperature and does not tend toward zero at low density, indicating that it is formed promptly rather than in spur recombination. A minimum in both the radical and H 2 yields is observed around 0.4 kg/dm 3 density in supercritical water. I. Introduction Commercial nuclear reactors essentially provide a source of heat used to drive a “heat engine” (turbine) to create electricity. A fundamental result of Thermodynamics shows that the higher the temperature at which any heat engine is operated, the greater its efficiency. Consequently, one obvious way to increase the operating efficiency and profitability for future nuclear power plants is to heat the water of the primary cooling loop to higher temperatures. Current pressurized water reactors run at roughly 300 °C and 100 atm pressure. 1 Designs under consideration would operate at 500 °C and 250 atm, 2-6 i.e., well beyond the critical point of water. This would improve the thermodynamic efficiency by about 30% and allow considerable reduction in cost. A major unanswered question has been, what changes occur in the radiation-induced chemistry in water as the temperature and pressure are raised beyond the critical point, and what do these imply for the limiting corrosion processes in the materials of the primary cooling loop? Direct measurement of the chemistry in reactor cores is extremely difficult. The extreme conditions of high temperature, pressure, and radiation fields are not compatible with normal chemical instrumentation. There are also problems of access to fuel channels in the reactor core. For these reasons, all reaction vendors and many operators have extensively used theoretical calculations and chemical models to simulate the detailed radiation chemistry of the water in the core and the consequences for materials. 7,8 The results of these model calculations can be no more accurate than the fundamental information fed into them, and serious discrepancies remain between model calcula- tions and reactor experiments. 8,9 The problem of modeling a supercritical-water-cooled reactor is even more daunting. A number of studies have been published in the last several years with the aim of providing the necessary fundamental information needed to model radiation chemistry in supercritical water. 10-23 Both reaction rates and radiation yields (G-values) for the primary free radicals • OH, H • , and e aq - are required, as well as for the recombination products H 2 and H 2 O 2 . Moreover, in reactor cores radiation is deposited both via γ radiation and energetic neutrons; 24 this paper represents the first in a series that will report G values from both /γ radiation and neutrons using the same detection methodology. To transfer the information to other systems for modeling studies, it is very important to know precisely the temperature and pressure of the fluid under irradiation. This is much easier to achieve with a flowing system than with sealed samples. For neutron experiments a high-temperature flow system was constructed for a small nuclear reactor at the University of Wisconsin, as will be described in subsequent papers. As a source of low-LET radiation for high-temperature experiments, we have found it very convenient to use an electron beam from a 3 MeV van de Graaff accelerator. The choice of detection method and scavengers is dictated by the characteristics of the reactor. The simplest method with sufficiently high sensitivity, reliability, and versatility is the detection of stable gas products produced by the radiation 25 using a mass spectrometer. In the following section we describe in some detail the detection technique that is common to both experiments. The scavenging experiments and results are then described, and in the Discussion we compare these results with others in the literature. II. Experimental Section The -radiolysis experiments were performed at the Notre Dame Radiation Laboratory using a custom-made supercritical water (SCW) irradiation block and 2.5 MeV electrons from a 3.0 MeV van de Graaff (VdG) accelerator. The apparatus consisted of sample reservoirs and pumps, a high pressure/ temperature irradiation flowtube, and ambient pressure/temper- ature analysis setup with a directly coupled mass spectrometer (Figure 1). Two glass water reservoirs with copper or stainless steel connection lines under atmospheric pressure were used to supply * To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: bartels@ hertz.rad.nd.edu. Phone (574) 631-5561. Fax: (574) 631-8068. 7777 J. Phys. Chem. A 2007, 111, 7777-7786 10.1021/jp071751r CCC: $37.00 © 2007 American Chemical Society Published on Web 07/24/2007