Radiation-induced electrical degradation experiments in the Japan Materials Testing Reactor

An experiment to measure radiation-induced electrical degradation (RIED) in a sapphire sample and in three MgO-insulated cables was conducted at the JMTR light water reactor. The materials were irradiated at about 260 degrees C to a fluence of 3 x 10(24) n/m(2) (E > 1 MeV) with an applied DC electric field between 100 kV/m and 500 kV/m. Even though the results for the sapphire sample are somewhat ambiguous because of an unexplained offset current of about 0.6 mu A, substantial degradation was not observed in the sapphire: instead, radiation-induced conductivity (RIC) seemed to decrease slightly during the experiment. Substantial increase in leakage current, that increased with applied electric field, occurred in the MgO-insulated cables. This increased conductivity disappeared when the reactor was shut down and sample temperature returned to ambient. However, the physical degradation apparently remained in the material while the reactor was off because restarting the irradiation brought the conductivity back to its previous, degraded, reactor-on value. This effect is different from the RIED effect reported by Hodgson but is similar to previous results reported by Shikama et al. Considerable data were taken to determine the sample temperature and leakage currents during the irradiation.