Uranium hydride corrosion. I New insights into the Condon-Kirkpatrick model of uranium hydride formation rate

Abstract An analytic solution to the uranium hydride formation rate equation of Condon and Kirkpatrick (CK) has been developed, which is directly solved via algebraic operations and requires only gaseous hydrogen (H2) pressure and temperature as inputs. The solution does not depend on the specific functional forms of the hydriding and dehydriding rate constants, nor of key physical parameters. A modified form of the CK model has also been developed, where replacement of the hydrogen solubility function results in an improved fit to published experimental data as H2 pressure decreases toward the corrosion threshold value.