A Novel Technique for Addition of Hydrogen to Zirconium Alloys: Mechanical Hydrogen Ingress and Its Applications

This thesis outlines the development of the Mechanical Hydrogen Ingress (MHI) technique, which is a novel method of adding hydrogen to zirconium. The method was shown to have an uncertainty of 2% of the predicted hydrogen concentration plus 1.4 ppm (i.e. a sample with 50 ppm would have an uncertainty of 0.02(50) + 1.4 = 2.4 ppm). The MHI technique was used to add a known amount of hydrogen to a low-hydrogen zirconium sample in order to determine the initial hydrogen concentration using the differential scanning calorimetry technique, to determine the hydrogen solubility in copper, and to add hydrogen to zirconium at temperatures below 350 °C to support life-extension experiments on irradiated ex-service CANDU pressure tubes.