Abstract
Light water reactors (LWRs) generate most of the nuclear electricity in Europe in this century. Therefore, the successful safe and economic operation and management of the GEN-II LWRs beyond their originally foreseen license period will be vital. For long-term operation (LTO) the vision is to move towards 60+ year’s operation of nuclear power plants. A key aspect of LTO is the understanding of the ageing and degradation mechanism(s) of structures, systems and components, in order to predict component behaviour in the LWR environment. Such an understanding of performance and ageing of nuclear power plants (NPPs) for safe and reliable LTO is strongly linked to the fabrication/production of components and the interaction of the component with the LWR environment. This is only achieved when critical degradation mechanisms such as stress corrosion cracking (SCC) are effectively mitigated by corrective measures.
This report, also representing a NUGENIA position paper on the role of surface deformation on environmentally-assisted cracking (EAC), summarises operational experience on SCC due to deformation, especially surface deformation, reviews national regulations and rules for surface treatments, makes conclusions and recommendation for further work.
The operational experience clearly shows the role of surface deformation on SCC initiation. Still, there are no international and almost no national rules or guidelines on optimum surface treatments. Creating best practise and guidelines is considered very important for assisting safe and economic LTO of LWRs. These must be based on a solid understanding and experimental proof on how surfaces can be optimised for mitigation of SCC.
This report, also representing a NUGENIA position paper on the role of surface deformation on environmentally-assisted cracking (EAC), summarises operational experience on SCC due to deformation, especially surface deformation, reviews national regulations and rules for surface treatments, makes conclusions and recommendation for further work.
The operational experience clearly shows the role of surface deformation on SCC initiation. Still, there are no international and almost no national rules or guidelines on optimum surface treatments. Creating best practise and guidelines is considered very important for assisting safe and economic LTO of LWRs. These must be based on a solid understanding and experimental proof on how surfaces can be optimised for mitigation of SCC.
Original language | English |
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Publisher | EC - European Commission |
Number of pages | 31 |
State | Published - Sep 2016 |