Recovery of the transition temperature of irradiated WWER-440 vessel metal by annealing

Book · Wed Dec 01 04:00:00 EST 1993

OSTI ID:140006

Amayev, A D; Kryukov, A M; Sokolov, M A ^[1]

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1. Inst. of Atomic Energy, Moscow (Russian Federation)

The main results from studying recovery of irradiation embrittlement of reactor vessel steels are presented. Investigations were carried out using WWER-440 vessel materials (base metal, weld metal). The irradiation temperature was 270 C, which corresponded to the operation temperature of the vessel wall. The effect of the annealing temperature and annealing time, neutron fluence, and phosphorus and copper impurity contents on recovery of the ductile-to-brittle transition temperature was studied. Recovery of the transition temperature depends mainly on the annealing temperature. At a phosphorus content exceeding 0.02%, recovery of properties in annealing is complicated. The effect of copper at contents lower than 0.2% has not been observed. At an annealing temperature of 420 C, residual postannealing embrittlement does not depend on neutron fluence. The results obtained in irradiation-annealing-reirradiations are also presented. After annealing, the tendency of the steel to irradiation embrittlement is not increased over that in its initial state.

• OSTI ID: 140006
• Report Number(s): CONF-9009544--; ISBN 0-8031-1478-8
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
ANNEALING
COPPER
DUCTILE-BRITTLE TRANSITIONS
EMBRITTLEMENT
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
METALLURGICAL EFFECTS
NEUTRON FLUENCE
PHOSPHORUS
PHYSICAL RADIATION EFFECTS
PRESSURE VESSELS
STEEL-CR2MOV
TRANSITION TEMPERATURE
WELDED JOINTS
WWER-3 REACTOR