IAEA publications on Integrity of Reactor Pressure Vessels (RPV)
The IAEA has established an International Working Group on Lifetime Management of NPPs and conducted a series of IAEA Co-ordinated Research Projects (CRPs) as well as created a worldwide database to store the results from RPV surveillance programmes. The primary purpose shall be to collect all accessible data from these programmes and specimens and then perform a more general analysis of these results than can be performed using national (or utility) databases, only. Creation of the database started in 1996 under the coordination of the aforementioned International Working Group on Lifetime Management of Nuclear Power Plants. To date, results from surveillance programmes from 10 countries are included in this database. Access to the databases is controlled by agreements with the IAEA.
For further information, please contact SKALTO.
Co-ordinated Research Projects (CRP)
The following CRPs have been or are being conducted:
- CRP-1 on "Irradiation Embrittlement of Reactor Pressure Vessel Steels"
- CRP-2 on "Analysis of the Behaviour of Advanced Reactor Pressure Vessel Steels under Neutron Irradiation"
- CRP-3 on “Optimising Reactor Pressure Vessel Surveillance Programmes and their Analysis”
- CRP-4 on "Assuring Structural Integrity of Reactor Pressure Vessels"
- CRP-5 on “Surveillance Programmes Results Application to RPV Integrity Assessment”
- CRP-6 on “Nickel Effects in Radiation Embrittlement of RPV Materials”
- CRP-7 on “Evaluation of Radiation damage of RPV using IAEA DB on RPV materials”
- CRP-8 on “Master Curve Approach to monitor the Fracture Toughness of RPV in Npps”
- CRP-9 on “Review and Benchmark of calculation methods for structural integrity assessment of RPVs during PTS”
- Round-robin Exercise (RRE) on “WWER-440 RPV Weld Metal Irradiation Embrittlement, Annealing and Re-embrittlement”
Publications
As a result of the activities above, the following publications are available:
- Guidelines for Prediction of Radiation Embrittlement of Operating WWER-440 Reactor Pressure Vessels (TECDOC-1442)
- Neutron Irradiation Embrittlement of Reactor Pressure Vessel Steels, (Technical Reports Series No. 163: hard copy only)
- Analysis of the Behaviour of Advanced Pressure Vessel Steels under Neutron Irradiation, (Technical Reports Series No. 265: hard copy only)
- Reference Manual on the IAEA JRQ Correlation Monitor Steel for Irradiation Damage Studies, (TECDOC-1230)
- Application of Surveillance Programme Results to Reactor Pressure Vessel Integrity Assessment, (TECDOC-1435)
- Guidelines for Application of the Master Curve Approach to Reactor Pressure Vessel Integrity in Nuclear Power Plants, (Technical Report Series No. 429)
- Effects of Nickel on Irradiation Embrittlement of Light Water Reactor Pressure Vessel Steels, (TECDOC-1441)
- Neutron Irradiation Embrittlement of Light Water Reactor Pressure Vessels (draft Technical Report Series, to be published)
