Post Mortem Investigations of Greifswald WWER-440 Reactor Pressure Vessels

Nuclear plant operators must demonstrate that the structural integrity of a nuclear reactor pressure vessel (RPV) is assured during routine operations or under postulated accident conditions. The aging of the RPV steels is controlled with surveillance program results. Radiation loading, metallurgical and environmental histories, however, can differ between surveillance and RPV materials. Therefore, the investigation of RPV material from decommissioned NPPs offers the unique opportunity to evaluate the real toughness response. A chance is given now with the investigation of RPV material from the decommissioned Greifswald NPP (WWER-440/230).
The Greifswald RPVs represent different material conditions such as irradiated, irradiated and annealed and irradiated, annealed and re-irradiated. A region covering ±0.70 m above and below the circumferential core weld was recovery annealed at 475° for about 150 hours. The working program is focused on the characterisation of the RPV steels (base and weld metal) through the RPV wall. It comprises chemical analysis, microstructure investigations (by means of metallography, electron microscopy and SANS) and mechanical testing (hardness measurements, tensile, Charpy-V), and fracture mechanics testing. The key part of the testing is focussed on the determination of the reference temperature T0 following the ASTM test standard E1921-09 to determine the facture toughness, and how it degrades under neutron irradiation.
The paper presents test results measured on trepans of the welding seam and base metal located in the reactor core region. The test results comprise Charpy-V, tensile and fracture toughness parameters. An additional aspect is the comparison of results determined on sub-size Charpy specimens machined of templates taken after the annealing from the uncladded inner RPV wall.