CorroZoom webinar

The next CorroZoom webinar will be on 22 April and will be given by Prof. James (Jamie) Noël from Western University. The talk is entitled “Corrosion of Copper (under Nuclear Waste Repository Conditions).” Jamie Noël has dived deep into Cu corrosion with the goal of using it to contain nuclear waste for a long time.

Date: 22 April 2025
To register (free for all): https://osu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_8wGX_OC-SGeSewJZ4GSocw

Corrosion of Copper (under Nuclear Waste Repository Conditions)
James (Jamie) Noël, Western University

Abstract
Copper was one of the first few metals manipulated and used by humans; our history of copper use extends back literally to the Bronze Age. In using copper as the corrosion barrier for nuclear fuel waste containers, we will count on that copper to function up to a million years or more into the future, longer than humans’ past experience with the metal. To help validate such an application, we are studying the corrosion behaviour of copper materials at a fundamental, mechanistic level under the environmental conditions expected in the deep geologic repository in which the containers would be buried. This environment will evolve over time, from initially warm and oxidizing to eventually cool and anoxic. Therefore this talk will illustrate how we are evaluating the possibilities and extent of uniform corrosion and localized corrosion of copper in oxygenated environments, sulfide-driven corrosion (linked to the action of sulfate-reducing bacteria) under anoxic conditions, and corrosion by oxy-sulfur species during the transition between oxic and anoxic conditions. We also explore possibilities for hydrogen absorption into the copper, the corrosion-suppressing influences of the highly compacted bentonite clay that will be used to encase the containers and back-fill the tunnels that hold them, the lessons to be learned from billion-year-old natural deposits of metallic copper and whether galvanic corrosion at a copper-steel couple created by a through-coating defect on Cu-coated steel could lead to significant steel corrosion.

Biography
Jamie Noël is an associate professor of chemistry at The University of Western Ontario in London, Canada. He earned BSc and MSc degrees in chemistry from the University of Guelph, Ontario and PhD from the University of Manitoba, all in Canada. He is an associate editor for CORROSION Journal and former chair of the ECS Corrosion Division. He has published over 150 journal articles and 6 book chapters. He leads a large research group focused mainly on the corrosion and degradation of materials for use in a nuclear waste repository, including the corrosion of the nuclear fuel itself. He employs a wide range of electrochemical and advanced surface analytical methods to understand materials degradation at a fundamental level, and has world-class expertise in applying in situ neutron reflectometry to probe surface composition and structure at the sub-nanometre scale.