Abstract
Nondestructive magnetic measurement methods can be successfully applied to determine the embrittlement of nuclear pressure vessel steel caused by neutron irradiation. It was found in previous works that reasonable correlation could be obtained between the nondestructively measured magnetic parameters and destructively determined ductile-to-brittle transition temperature. However, a large scatter of the measurement points was detected even in the cases of the non-irradiated reference samples. The reason for their scattering was attributed to the local inhomogeneity of material. This conclusion is verified in the present work by applying three different magnetic methods on two sets of Charpy samples made of two different reactor steel materials. It was found that by an optimal magnetic pre-selection of samples, a good, linear correlation can be found between magnetic parameters as well as the ductile-to-brittle transition temperature with low scattering of points. This result shows that neutron irradiation embrittlement depends very much on the local material properties.
Highlights
Nuclear power plants (NPPs) have a key role within the energy production landscape.An extremely important aspect is their safety, so inspection of a power plant’s integrity is crucial, especially for the long-term operation
We have found relevant differences in magnetic behavior, which resulted in big scatter in Magnetic adaptive testing (MAT), 3MA and in magnetic Barkhausen noise (MBN) vs. ductile-to-brittle transition temperature (DBTT) plots
Neutron irradiation-generated embrittlement was investigated by three different types of nondestructive magnetic methods on two different types of reactor pressure vessel steel materials and the results were compared with the destructively measured transition temperature
Summary
Nuclear power plants (NPPs) have a key role within the energy production landscape.An extremely important aspect is their safety, so inspection of a power plant’s integrity is crucial, especially for the long-term operation. The most important part of the pressurized and boiling water reactors is the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) Their primary aging process is the irradiation generated material embrittlement and it is one of the most important lifetime limiting factors. This process, caused by the influence of the long-term and highenergy neutrons, generates changes in the mechanical properties [1], which are inspected periodically. The ductile-to-brittle transition temperature (DBTT) determined by Charpy impact testing is the authorized parameter that refers to embrittlement in the nuclear industry. This destructive measurement technique requires many samples, and the error of measurement is high. A general overview can be found in Reference [3] about the application of nondestructive magnetic methods
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