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Fracture mechanical specimens of the compact tension (CT) type are normally used in tests that study stress corrosion crack (SCC) growth rates (CGR). Normally, the width, W, is twice the thickness, B (W=2B), and B for common specimen sizes is 12.5 or 25 mm. The specimen size can be changed by scaling its dimensions.
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Alloy 600 and SS 316L are common materials used for structural components of pressurized water reactors (PWRs). However, as PWRs age, incidents of general corrosion and stress corrosion cracking (SCC) are more likely to be found in the structural components. One of the major material degradation problems is primary water stress corrosion cracking (PWSCC).
The SCC of stainless steels has been an issue facing light water reactors (LWRs) since 1965 when sensitized components failed in the Dresden boiling water reactor (BWR). Numerous experimental efforts have been performed to characterize the SCC of stainless steel in LWRs in the last several decades and many of these efforts have been reported at each of the prior Environmental Degradation of Materials Conferences. Recent research has focused on characterizing SCCGR dependencies in hydrogen deaerated water. Testing of cold worked (CW) stainless steel has shown that heavily CW stainless steel has Arrhenius temperature functionality with a thermal activation energy of roughly 75 kJ/mol . In moderately to low CW stainless steel, a departure from Arrhenius temperature functionality is observed due to high temperature SCCGR retardation (HTR). This paper further extends this research and describes tests which were conducted to characterize the SCCGR temperature dependency of sensitized and CW 304 SS in hydrogenated water.
Alkali-silica reaction (ASR) induced damage is one of the main causes of degradation in reinforced concrete (RC) structures, especially in the high relative humidity environmental conditions. ASR involves complex dissolution-precipitation reactions in concrete that take place in the presence of alkali ions, silica, and moisture. Alkali ions diffuse into the porous aggregate through the concrete pore solution and startthe dissolution of silica by breaking silanol and siloxane bonds in the reactive aggregates.
Under current energy-market conditions, the nuclear industry must innovate and move towards a more economically viable approach for many operations and maintenance (O&M) activities. One O&M change can include minimizing labor involved and frequency of O&M activities, including shifting some manual tests to automated online testing. Changing test practices must not only consider costs but also risks and efficacy of new test approaches compared to current practice.
Historically, regulators, industry and other research organizations have performed research on materials harvested from a broad range of components, including the reactor pressure vessel (RPV), internals, and piping. Harvesting has included both service-aged materials as well as components from unfinished reactors. This harvesting and associated research has provided valuable insights into materials performance, such as flaw populations, materials properties, aging effects and non-destructive evaluation effectiveness.
Current fatigue assessments for the fatigue life of a plant component are usually based on methodologies that use uniaxial fatigue test data (i.e. ASME Section III, and are intended to be conservative for design and fitness-for-purpose assessments when applied to plant components and loading. This data is generated through cyclic loading of specimens at a constant amplitude, and failure is usually defined as when there is a load drop of 25% from steady state stress under strain-controlled conditions (or specimen separation for stress control). The corresponding number of cycles is then used as the definition of fatigue life for a particular strain amplitude. It is known that there are differences between fatigue behaviour in an idealised laboratory setting and in-service components which can contribute to excessive conservatism in plant assessments.
Powder metallurgy with hot isostatic pressing (PM-HIP), which enables to densify powders in a furnace at high pressure and temperature is a newly developed manufacturing process for pressure retaining part in nuclear industry. It has advantages such as weld free near-net shape products, improved material properties for castings, short process time, saving in raw material costs, etc. EPRI have conducted several tests such as tensile test, impact test, chemical composition analysis on the manufactured samples for pressure retaining applications.
The corrosion of zirconium-based alloys is a service life-limiting factor in fuel rod performance. Mechanistic understanding of the corrosion process under reactor irradiation conditions still alludes to the nuclear industry. Pre-transition corrosion behavior of Zircaloy-4 has been reported to show a minimal effect from the irradiation environment, and the in-reactor corrosion kinetics is athermal and similar to the ex-situ autoclave corrosion exposure. However, the post-transition in-reactor corrosion kinetics depends on temperature and neutron flux. As discussed by Kammenzind et al. in Ref., the long-term post-transition corrosion rates of Zircaloy-4 are significantly accelerated in a PWR radiation environment over that observed with non-irradiated specimens in an autoclave environment.