Abstract:Uranium is an important strategic nuclear material, widely used in energy systems and defense industries. However, uranium is easily corroded quickly by the environmental atmosphere in service, which not only produces radioactive corrosion products but also poses a serious threat to service performance and life. Although research on the corrosion of uranium has been carried out for decades, the understanding of the corrosion behavior of uranium is not clear because of its radioactivity, fast corrosion rate, and various corrosion products. Based on the relevant research on the corrosion behavior of uranium in oxygen, water vapor, and oxygen-containing water vapor, this paper briefly introduces the typical corrosion products of uranium, and reviews the current research status of uranium corrosion kinetics from the aspects of corrosion kinetics model, corrosion rate equation and activation energy. This paper reviews the research progress on the corrosion mechanism of uranium from the aspects of the dissociation diffusion of corrosive media and the evolution of key intermediate corrosion products, summarizes the current clear and unified understanding, points out the current controversial issues in the research field, and looks forward to the main research directions in the future, providing research basis for the corrosion assessment, life prediction and corrosion protection of uranium.