Nuclear energy plays a crucial role in meeting the growing global energy demands, providing a carbon-free solution. The performance of structural materials and fuels used dictates the safe and economical operation of nuclear power systems. Nuclear materials face extremely harsh environments due to high temperatures, corrosive solutions, and intense radiation flux, resulting in dramatic microstructural changes and significant degradation in material performance. Notable examples include defect evolution, irradiation-induced precipitation, chemical segregation and depletion of solute elements at grain boundaries, and void-induced swelling. Therefore, it is crucial to thoroughly characterize microstructural evolution under various operational conditions to gain key insights that can accelerate the research and development of nuclear materials.

Techniques such as X-ray diffraction, scanning/transmission electron microscopy, atom probe tomography, positron annihilation spectroscopy, and other non-destructive methods have been crucial for characterizing nuclear materials from the macroscopic level down to the atomic scale. Meanwhile, emerging techniques like in-situ characterization, correlative microscopy, and high-throughput characterization aided by machine learning offer new opportunities to elucidate microstructural changes under extreme conditions and to correlate these changes with property degradation. Additionally, there is a growing need to improve data analytics and validation approaches to better understand defect evolution and its impact on material performance in harsh environments.

This Research Topic is focused on showcasing developments in advanced characterization techniques for investigating nuclear materials from atomic to macro scales. The Topic seeks to accelerate the research and development of structural materials and fuels for nuclear power systems by presenting cutting-edge research and providing insights for future research directions.

Key phenomena of interest to this Topic include defect production and migration, precipitation and phase transformation, the behavior of volatile and gaseous fission products, degradation of mechanical properties, and overall microstructural integrity.

This Research Topic welcomes research on all types of characterization techniques with validation using multi-scale modelling, along with analytic studies.

The following areas are of particular interest to this Topic:
• Microstructural changes and property degradation under one or more extreme conditions, e.g. high stress or strain rates, intensive radiation damage with varying dose rates, oxidative and corrosive environments, and elevated temperatures
• Radiation-induced defect structures, such as bubbles, voids, dislocations, loops, segregation, precipitation, and phase transformations
• Fission and fusion energy materials
• Novel materials for nuclear applications, including high-entropy alloys
• Metallic, amorphous, and ceramic fuels for fission reactors, as well as fuel cladding chemical interactions.

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Frontiers in Nuclear Engineering

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