Abstract
After a short introduction for the recent corrosion accident of the Mihama nuclear power plant, characteristics of the erosion/corrosion phenomena including flow accelerated corrosion (FAC) have been reviewed with emphasizing the effect of the flow rate on metal loss. The FAC mechanism of carbon steel in high temperature water was discussed based on the physicochemical model and mass transfer model with hydrodynamics. Several mass transfer models which assume the carbon steel corrosion process to be determined by dissolution of magnetite film were reviewed. It was pointed out that a macro cell corrosion mechanism attributing to difference in oxygen concentration which has been recently proposed is hardly accepted for the flow accelerated carbon steel corrosion in high temperature pure water because of low conductivity of pure water and low driving force for corrosion reaction due to low oxygen concentration.
