The problems of improving operating procedures and diagnosing the bearing capacity of metal structures designed and operating in the Arctic and subarctic regions of the country with a long period of low climatic temperatures remain unresolved. The paper notes that the development of digital methods of non-destructive testing, primarily X-ray diffractometry methods, can provide technical diagnostics of structures by identifying the features of the deformation of the crystalline structure of structural materials in an elastic stress-strain state. It is shown that the application of the method of X-ray diffractometry of complex polycrystalline structural steels has sufficient resolution to detect changes in the fine structure under the elastically stressed state of the samples. The broadening of the diffraction line (B) profile characterizes the effect of the elastically stressed state of steel samples 08 ps and 09Г2С on the course of microdeformation processes in the surface layers of the metal. The effect of periodic annual temperature fluctuations on the profile characteristics of the diffraction lines of 08 ps structural steel samples was studied experimentally. It is established that low climatic temperatures contribute to the elimination of individual instrumental errors due to the design conditions of the experiment. A sharp change in the true half-width of the profile of diffraction lines (В) at stresses σ ≥ 0.5 σтindicates the minimum possible value of the allowable stress [σ] for structural steel 08 ps.