Highlights from some Tacis Projects on Reactor Pressure Vessel Embrittlement

The European Union' TACIS programme was established to support the New Independent States since 1991. One priority for TACIS funding is nuclear safety. For TACIS, the European Commission (EC) Directorate General External Relations is responsible for the Indicative Programmes whilst the EC-EuropeAid Co-operation Office is in charge of identifying and implementing all the assistance projects through the Annual Programmes. In these programmes, EC-Joint Research Center (JRC) is the Technical & Scientific adviser of above mentioned EC Directorates. During the years of Tacis assistance activities in nuclear safety quite a few programs were dedicated to the Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV) embrittlement issue. The ageing of the RPV was of special concern due to the faster than expected neutron irradiation embrittlement of the core region weld of the VVER 440 NPPs and some shortcomings of the RPV surveillance program in VVER 1000 NPPs. Most of the Tacis ageing projects were so far dedicated to studying the RPV embrittelement and integrity issue. In this paper highlights from some completed Tacis projects on the RPV embrittelment and integrity issue have been selected and briefly described. The situation regarding the ongoing Tareg 2.01/00 project “Validation of neutron embrittlement for VVER 1000 & VVER 440 RPVs, with emphasis on integrity assessment” and the its twin project Tareg 2.01/03 “Neutron irradiation embrittlement assessment and validation of embrittlement models for VVER Reactor pressure vessels” are also presented.

BIETH Michel;  RIEG Claude; 

AHLSTRAND Ralf; 

2008-02-11

National Academy of Sciences - Institute for Problems of Strength

JRC34978

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC34978,