Austenitic stainless steels are the main materials of construction in nuclear spent fuel reprocessing and waste management plants that use nitric acid (HNO₃) as the process fluid. In this study, it has been shown that the potential, attained either by addition of oxidizing ions or by external application, determines the corrosion behavior of stainless steels. An equation derived from curve fitting of the measured corrosion data is proposed for predicting the corrosion rates of a specific stainless steel at any given operating potential. The influence of microstructure (“step,” “dual,” and “ditch”) of Type 304L (UNS S30403) stainless steel was also studied.