Page 414 - Challenges in Corrosion Costs Causes Consequences and Control(2015)

392 CONSEQUENCES OF CORROSION

labor requirements and larger stocks of spare parts is one of the consequences of
corrosion.
The above factors illustrate quite clearly that to maximize profit, no manager can
afford to ignore corrosion.

5.6 SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF CORROSION

In the history of the use of materials, the past 170 years have been closely associ-
ated with alloys of metals such as iron, aluminum, and copper. Our highly developed
civilization could not exist without them. Yet corrosion is their Achilles’ heel. The
degradation of metallic materials is very largely because of corrosion, and in a society
that focuses more and more on dollar cost, we have seen how expensive corrosion is.
It is difficult to understand why corrosion has not been pursued as earnestly as the cure
for AIDS. The answer to this question depends partly on the way society is structured.
The scientific and engineering communities are strongly structured and rely for their
financing on longstanding practices. Corrosion falls between traditional disciplines,
so it is frequently considered to be out of the mainstream and somehow less impor-
tant. Virtually all metals suffer corrosion, so its effects permeate nearly every aspect of
human endeavor, and this fact alone makes the study of corrosion and its control more
important, not less. Thus we find that corrosion is mostly ignored by chemists and
electrochemists, who, not being familiar with metallurgy, do not wish to use systems
involving real alloys. Although studied as a minor part of mechanical engineering
courses, corrosion is the main reason why engineered systems will ultimately fail.
The following examples provide the evidence for corrosion-based failures.

5.7 THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY

This industry has most of the corrosion problems of other industries and some that
are all of its own. Right from the start, the potential for disaster was recognized and
tackled by using high-grade materials in many parts of the systems. Zirconium alloys
were needed, which had their own corrosion problems and solutions. Growing world-
wide demands for acceptable environmental performance have alienated others to the
cause of nuclear power, in particular, after events at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
This industry too had its share of corrosion costs. For boiler reactors’ capacity
factor losses because of corrosion problems averaged over 6% between 1980 and
1991, reaching a peak value of 18% in 1982. It is estimated that corrosion problems
have cost the nuclear utility industry more than $5 billion since 1980. In addition,
repairs and mitigation cost the average US light water reactor >$0.5 billion in the
industry with radiation exposures of about 100 rem per year.
Long-term storage of high-level nuclear waste has been a difficult problem. Cor-
rosion behavior has long been known to be aggravated under high-level irradiation.
The task of designing suitable containers that will maintain high-level waste in a
safe condition for ten thousand years has stretched designers to the limit. Projection