Elastic effect on the evolution of cluster ensembles in irradiated reactor pressure vessel steels

Neutron irradiation leads to a number of phenomena that have been extensively studied. Stoller from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (USA) suggested to describe the real damage structure of VVER RPV steels by a composite model with point defect clusters and Cu-rich clusters. The kinetics theory has been applied in our investigations to clarify the relevance of this model for VVER reactor pressure vessel (RPV) steel. Kinetics theory has to take into account the nucleation, deterministic and coarsening stages. In accordance with experimental data the preferable attention is given to the vacancy clusters.