Constraint-Based Master Curve Analysis of a Nuclear Reactor Pressure Vessel Steel

This report presents the outcome of four fracture test series, addressing the ductile-to-brittle toughness behaviour of a nuclear reactor pressure vessel steel. Each test series corresponds to a specific test specimen geometry, tensile or three-point-bend, with a given degree of crack-tip constraint. A brief overview is given of available constraint-based fracture mechanics methodologies in the ductile-to-brittle transition range, including both engineering and local approach procedures. The obtained experimental data are analysed by means of the Master Curve standard ASTM E1921. Variability of the resulting reference temperature, T0, is successfully confirmed by a selection of constraint-based methodologies.JRC.DG.F.4-Safety of future nuclear reactor

First Experience with the Consolidation of WWER Reactor Pressure Vessel Knowledge through a New Method

One of today¿s activities of the Joint Research Centre¿s (JRC) Institute for Energy (IE) concerns data management and dissemination in nuclear safety. An ¿Online Data & Information Network¿ (ODIN) is set-up, which maintains one document database and four engineering databases. These databases aim to deploy networks for energy related research & development, specifically for nuclear energy and to provide the public experimental data of European projects on mechanical and thermo-physical material properties in comparison with international standards and recommendations. Due to its long lasting experience and being in a key position as regards web based d-base (e.g. ODIN), the IAEA for example has recently transferred the reactor surveillance data-base to the IE. Lately, many stakeholders, such as Institutes, R&D Organisations, Regulators, Utilities, Governmental Organisations, have recognised the need for collecting, preserving, consolidating (validating), and disseminating nuclear knowledge (documents, competences and data), in order to make it easily accessible to future generations through modern informatics tools and training and education measures. A broad spectrum of components and technologies should be considered, i.e. reactor pressure vessel (RPV), piping, internals, steam generator, etc. regarding knowledge, material data and practices. In the long run, it will also support future decommissioning exercises of nuclear installations as a valuable knowledge source. In addition to the knowledge in each Member State, the IE produced a long standing record of results from its own institutional activities and even more through the participation to a large number of European Network partnership projects. It is important, besides preservation, to consolidate the enormous amount of scientific results produced since. Therefore, the IE has developed a method for consolidation of nuclear knowledge. The method relays on the mobilisation of all identified leading experts in the EU in re-evaluating old knowledge and consolidating what is necessary to create training materials for the new generations. This method was applied for a pilot study for consolidating and preserving WWER RPV safety related knowledge, which is scattered in many countries and in different languages, facing a serious issue in terms of getting lost. This initiative could be the start of a wider Nuclear Knowledge Preservation and Consolidation activity. Experience gained from the first exercise will be presented in this paper.JRC.F.4-Safety of future nuclear reactor

Annealing and Re-embrittlement of Reactor Pressure Vessel Materials - State of the Art Report

Annealing of a reactor pressure vessel embrittled by neutron irradiation constitutes the only known technique to restore the initial material properties, to an extent that depends on the annealing conditions and on the materials. This technique is used in WWER-440 type reactor pressure vessels. A very important related issue is the one of re-embrittlement behaviour of the material after the annealing. In this respect, there is an obvious link with radiation embrittlement understanding. This report compiles the vast amount of information on annealing and re-embrittlement, which is available in the European countries where such annealing operations have been performed. In addition this topic was also investigated in various TACIS-PHARE projects, and the conclusions are included here as well. To complete the state-of-the-art, the results from a number of annealing experiments carried out in US on Western type RPV steels have also been considered.JRC.F.4-Nuclear design safet

Operation and Utilisation of the High Flux Reactor: Annual Report 2013

The High Flux Reactor (HFR) at Petten is managed by the Institute for Energy and Transport (IET) of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) and operated by the Nuclear Research and consultancy Group (NRG) which is also the licence holder and responsible for its commercial activities. The High Flux Reactor (HFR) operates at 45 MW and is of the tank-in-pool type, light water cooled and moderated. It is one of the most powerful multi-purpose materials testing reactors in the world and one of the world's leaders in target irradiation for the production of medical radioisotopes.JRC.F.4-Innovative Technologies for Nuclear Reactor Safet

Operation and Utilisation of the High Flux Reactor - Annual Report 2012

The High Flux Reactor (HFR) at Petten is managed by the Institute for Energy and Transport (IET) of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) and operated by the Nuclear Research and consultancy Group (NRG) which is also the licence holder and responsible for its commercial activities. The High Flux Reactor (HFR) operates at 45 MW and is of the tank-in-pool type, light water cooled and moderated. It is one of the most powerful multi-purpose materials testing reactors in the world and one of the world's leaders in target irradiation for the production of medical radioisotopes.JRC.F.4-Nuclear Reactor Integrity Assessment and Knowledge Managemen

Radiation Embrittlement of Spanish NPP Base Metals and Welds; Mechanistic Interpretation of Available Surveillance Data

The availability of high quality data coming from the Spanish RPV surveillance programme is offering the possibility to verify the applicability of simple semi-mechanistic models and tuning the model parameters. The available sets of surveillance data, of 7 different RPVs, are showing rather consistent behavior confirming that Cu, together with P, is the main responsible for damage due to nano-precipitations. The fluence range is between and 0.84xl018 and 55.6xl018 n cm 2 and the observed transition temperature shifts are always far below admissible limits. Copper ranges between 0.02 to 0.23wtper cent, while Phosphorus variation is between 0.004 to 0.02 lwtpercent. Ni levels are contained and always below 1 wtpercent. The content of Mn are covering a wide range; from 1.13 to 2.07 wtpercent making it possible to analyse its effects. In this paper a mechanistic interpretation of the surveillance data is given showing the possible role of Mn and synergisms of Mn and P/Cu following recent hypothesis that Mn, as well as Ni, are playing a similar basic role in making matrix more sensitive to radiation damage, both for base metals and welds, and enhancing P/Cu effects.JRC.F.4-Nuclear design safet

Model Steels with Parametric Variation of Ni, Mn, Si and Cr Content - Correlation between Magnetic Barkhausen Noise & Charpy Impact Test Results

In order to understand the role and influence of Ni, Mn, Si and Cr alloying elements and certain impurities on the mechanical properties of steels a large spectrum of ferritic steels with parametric variation of alloying elements as well as impurities content were prepared in the frame of the SAFELIFE Action of JRC-IE and the AMES Network. The composition of the 12 prepared model steels were inspired by typical base compositions of WWER-1000 and PWR base metal materials. In the present work the results of Magnetic Barkhausen Noise measurements are discussed and correlated with the results of Charpy impact tests.JRC.DG.F.4-Safety of future nuclear reactor

Recovery of Materials and Fresh Water Supply Using Renewable Energy

Growing population, progressively increasing lifestyle and related demand creates pressure on the huge but finite global resources. The water-energy-food nexus implicitly includes also materials both fuels and non-fuels. Besides water, food and energy demand, the demand for materials is in fact also steadily growing. Pressure on materials resources is often directly translated into pressure on land use, massively utilized already for food and energy production, fresh water, fuels supply, etc. New technologies will make our life even easier and more comfortable but inevitably the pressure on resources will rise also in scenarios with high renewable energy sources (RES) penetration. Direct utilization of RES at the harvesting locations for the production of materials could be an option also to avoid huge energy transmission and storage infrastructures, as well as benefit of overall higher efficiency. One way can be the use of RES to extract brines and salts from sea water. The produced materials could then be stored and transported to land for further processing possibly using RES sources as well. Potentially the impact on land could be negligible or even positive, since deserts, dry inhabited sea shores or islands, unsuitable for agriculture, or salt lakes could be utilized and water generated at the same time. RES harvesting potential in such areas is often huge while possibility to deliver the energy to dense populated areas is limited. In this paper, the potential for recovery of materials and fresh water from sea water using RES is investigated. The conclusions are indicating concrete possibilities for sustainable materials production in particular for calcium, potassium and magnesium for which the European Union (EU) supply dependency is 100%. The potential to generate significant amounts of fresh water in remote, often dry areas is huge as well. The technology could be exploited by all countries with sea access.JRC.C.7-Knowledge for the Energy Unio

Integrity of Reactor Pressure Vessels in Nuclear Power Plants: Assessment of Irradiation Embrittlement Effects in Reactor Pressure Vessel Steels

This report addresses the effects of neutron irradiation on the steels and welds of the RPV's of light water cooled and moderated reactors (LWRs-PWR, BWRs and WWERs).JRC.F.4-Safety of future nuclear reactor

The RPV Steels and Model Alloys Studied by Nuclear Spectroscopic Methods

Abstract is not availableJRC.F.4-Nuclear design safet