Abstract
Carbon steels which are used for such as water supply line, core spray line, and clean up heat exchanger in Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) Plant, are main structural materials as well as an austenic stainless steels, and Ni based alloys. It has been well known that carbon steels can become susceptible to stress-corrosion cracking (SCC) in BWR primary coolant water environments, i.e., the high-temperature, high-purity water containing dissolved oxygen. Nevertheless, their sensitivity of SCC appears to be markedly smaller compared to that of weld-sensitized Type 304 stainless steels, whole failure has often been observed. This paper examines the critical condition, especially effects of hardness, and temperature for the initiation of SCC by means of Slow Strain Rate Tensile (SSRT) test, and Creviced Bent Beam (CBB) test as laboratory accelerated tests. It has been shown that, (1) Intergranular stress-corrosion cracking (IGSCC) initiates over hardness of Hv 400 for single bead weld material, simulated corner weld; (2) in middle temperature domain around 160 to 190°C range, so many stress-corrosion cracks initiate, but each crack is not so deep, on the other hand, in high temperature domain, stress-corrosion cracks initiate few in number, but each cracks is developed so deep.
