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

The Euratom 5th Framework Programme Project FRAME (Fracture Mechanics Based Embrittlement); Description of the Project and First Results

The objectives, the experimental research programme and the first results of the FRAME project are described in the paper. Altogether 26 different materials were irradiated in a single irradiation capsule and the Master Curve bsed To shifts were measured for each material.JRC.F.4-Nuclear design safet