Celestial Body or Corroded Surface?

At first look, this landscape feels borrowed from somewhere else: a moon marked by asteroids, an ocean floor shaped by currents, a surface weathered by time. However, this is not another world, but a titanium tube, quietly enduring, inside a model of a Canadian nuclear reactor system. Captured with a scanning electron microscope, this micro-terrain has undergone weeks of corrosion and flow within a model of the Primary Heat Transport System of a CANDU(R) reactor. Canyons and valleys trace the movement of coolant; pits resemble craters, etched by chemistry, not meteorites. Scattered across the surface, bright particles punctuate the darkness, deposits of magnetite, an iron oxide precipitate that is the focus of my research and common in operating nuclear systems. This surface is both archive and process: a record of material degrading under extreme industrial conditions. By studying how magnetite forms, precipitates, and transports, my work aims to better predict corrosion behavior and radioactivity transport in reactor systems, to support tools like the UNB CNER’s CARTA code, contributing to improved maintenance strategies and safer working conditions in existing nuclear plants. The cosmic illusion fades, revealing an environment shaped by flow, corrosion, and time, not gravity.