Just like the countdown to a much-anticipated event, China’s traditional festival, the Spring Festival, was drawing near at the turn of 2020 and early 2021. Looking back on 2020, an unexpected achievement for me was that our company’s powder materials were included in the supply list for another national project. Although the whole team maintained a steady and low-profile working style, we carried out full-scale cooperation with this customer who took the initiative to reach out to us. After eight months of collaboration with the customer, the coatings prepared from our powder passed the acceptance inspection.
Good products still need proper promotion. Without disclosing the customer’s confidential information, I will briefly introduce the application of ceramic spray coating in the nuclear power sector. On March 11, 2011, a massive magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck Japan, followed by a tsunami that hit the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Subsequently, the Fukushima nuclear accident was classified at the highest level, Level 7, the same rating as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Japanese authorities acknowledged that the molten nuclear reactor core had begun seeping downward and contaminating groundwater. Rescue operations at the Fukushima plant relied heavily on cooling water, which was only a passive, symptomatic measure. It is evident that while the Fukushima nuclear accident was triggered by natural disasters, its continuous deterioration stemmed from delays by the Japanese authorities. In 2020, the Japanese government decided to adopt the proposal from its expert panel to discharge tritium-containing wastewater from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean. As a neighboring country, China has concerns over this plan. Following the nuclear accident, South Korea has banned seafood imports from Japan’s Fukushima region. Many Japanese anti-nuclear activists also opposed the ocean discharge of the wastewater. They argued that tritium, even less hazardous than strontium and cesium, should still be removed. Japanese fisheries organizations have repeatedly voiced concerns that the discharge would devastate local fisheries. On March 26, relevant officials from the Ministry of Environmental Protection (National Nuclear Safety Administration) of China stated that environmental authorities detected trace amounts of the artificial radionuclide iodine-131 in aerosol samples at three monitoring sites in Raohe County, Fuyuan County and Hulin County of Heilongjiang Province. Systems for storing and discharging cooling water generally require treatment with tritium barrier coatings. As an isotope of hydrogen, tritium features strong reducibility. It tends to dissolve and permeate through metallic containers more readily under high temperatures, posing threats to the health of workers. Ceramic materials boast low hydrogen solubility, diffusion rate and permeability, making them outstanding tritium barrier materials. Nevertheless, their inherent brittleness makes it difficult to fabricate them into containers for hydrogen and tritium storage. Therefore, surface coating technology can be adopted to deposit proper ceramic coatings on stainless steel surfaces so as to achieve the effect of tritium permeation resistance.