Accelerated thermal aging of harvested hypalon jacket for remaining useful life determination and diagnosis - 210

Conference · Thu Jun 15 04:00:00 EDT 2017

OSTI ID:23035334

Duckworth, Robert C.; Kidder, Michelle K.; Aytug, Tolga ^[1]; Fifield, Leonard S.; Glass, III, William ^[2]; Davis, Sarah ^[3]

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1. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, PO Box 2008, One Bethel Valley Road, Oak Ridge, TN 37831 (United States)
2. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, PO Box 999, 902 Battelle Boulevard, Richland, WA 99354 (United States)
3. University of Tennessee-Knoxville Knoxville, TN 37996 (United States)

For nuclear power plants (NPPs) considering second license renewal for their operation beyond 60 years, knowledge of long-term operation, condition monitoring, and viability for the reactor components including reactor pressure vessel, concrete structures, and cable systems is essential. Such knowledge will provide NPPs with a game plan to predict performance and to estimate costs that are associated with monitoring or replacement programs for the affected systems. For cable systems that encompass a wide variety of materials, manufacturers, and in-plant location, accelerated aging of harvested cable jacket and insulation can provide insight as to remaining useful life and methods for monitoring. Accelerated thermal aging in air at temperatures between 80 deg. C and 120 deg. C was carried out on a multi-conductor control rod cable that had been inservice for over 30 years and was made by Boston Insulated Wire with Hypalon{sup TM} cable jacket and ethylene-propylene rubber insulation. From elongation at break (EAB) measurements and supporting Arrhenius analysis of the jacket material, an activation energy of 97.84 kJ/mol was estimated and the time to degradation, as represented by 50% EAB at the expected maximum operating temperature of 45 deg. C, was estimated to be 80 years. These values were slightly below previous measurements on similar BIW Hypalon cable jacket and could either be attributed to inservice degradation or variations in material properties from process variations. In addition, results from indenter modulus measurements and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy suggest possible markers that could be beneficial to monitor cable conditions. (authors)

• Research Organization: American Nuclear Society - ANS, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
• OSTI ID: 23035334
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
ACTIVATION ENERGY
AGING
CONCRETES
ELONGATION
ETHYLENE
FOURIER TRANSFORM SPECTROMETERS
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
PERFORMANCE
PRESSURE VESSELS
RUBBERS