Continuous AE crack monitoring of a dissimilar metal weldment at Limerick Unit 1
- Pacific Northwest Lab., Richland, WA (United States)
Acoustic emission (AE) technology for continuous surveillance of a reactor component(s) to detect crack initiation and/or crack growth has been developed at Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNL). The technology was validated off-reactor in several major tests, but it had not been validated by monitoring crack growth on an operating reactor system. A flaw indication was identified during normal inservice inspection of piping at Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO) Limerick Unit 1 reactor during the 1989 refueling outage. Evaluation of the flaw indication showed that it could remain in place during the subsequent fuel cycle without compromising safety. The existence of this flaw indication offered a long sought opportunity to validate AE surveillance to detect and evaluate crack growth during reactor operation. AE instrumentation was installed by PNL and PECO to monitor the flaw indication during two complete fuel cycles. This report discusses the results obtained from the AE monitoring over the period May 1989 to March 1992 (two fuel cycles).
- Research Organization:
- US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Washington, DC (United States). Div. of Engineering; Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC06-76RL01830
- OSTI ID:
- 10121476
- Report Number(s):
- NUREG/CR-5963; PNL-8844; ON: TI94006452; TRN: 94:003606
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: Dec 1993
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Acoustic emission/flaw relationships for inservice monitoring of LWRs
Current capabilities for continuous AE monitoring to detect flaws in reactor pressure boundaries