PNL technical review of pressurized thermal-shock issues. [PWR]

Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNL) was asked to develop and recommend a regulatory position that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) should adopt regarding the ability of reactor pressure vessels to withstand the effects of pressurized thermal shock (PTS). Licensees of eight pressurized water reactors provided NRC with estimates of remaining effective full power years before corrective actions would be required to prevent an unsafe operating condition. PNL reviewed these responses and the results of supporting research and concluded that none of the eight reactors would undergo vessel failure from a PTS event before several more years of operation. Operator actions, however, were often required to terminate a PTS event before it deteriorated to the point where failure could occur. Therefore, the near-term (less than one year) recommendation is to upgrade, on a site-specific basis, operational procedures, training, and control room instrumentation. Also, uniform criteria should be developed by NRC for use during future licensee analyses. Finally, it was recommended that NRC upgrade nondestructive inspection techniques used during vessel examinations and become more involved in the evaluation of annealing requirements

C-Curves for Lengthening of Widmanstätten and Bainitic Ferrite

Widmanstätten ferrite and bainitic ferrite are both acicular and their lengthening rate in binary Fe-C alloys and low-alloyed steels under isothermal conditions is studied by searching the literature and through new measurements. As a function of temperature, the lengthening rate can be represented by a common curve for both kinds of acicular ferrite in contrast to the separate C-curves often presented in time-temperature-transformation (TTT) diagrams. The curves for Fe-C alloys with low carbon content show no obvious decrease in rate at low temperatures down to 623 K (350 °C). For alloys with higher carbon content, the expected decrease of rate as a function of temperature below a nose was observed. An attempt to explain the absence of a nose for low carbon contents by an increasing deviation from local equilibrium at high growth rates is presented. This explanation is based on a simple kinetic model, which predicts that the growth rates for Fe-C alloys with less than 0.3 mass pct carbon are high enough at low temperatures to make the carbon pileup, in front of the advancing tip of a ferrite plate, shrink below atomic dimensions, starting at about 600 K (323 °C).QC 20170817</p