Probabilistic fracture mechanics analyses of reactor pressure vessel under PTS transients

Onizawa, Kunio ; Shibata, Katsuyuki; Kato, Daisuke*; Li, Y.* 

The probabilistic fracture mechanics (PFM) analysis code PASCAL has been developed in JAERI. This code can evaluate the conditional probabilities of crack initiation and fracture of a reactor pressure vessel (RPV) under transient conditions such as pressurized thermal shock (PTS). Based on the temperature and stress distributions in the vessel wall for four PTS sequences in a typical 3-loop PWR, parametric PFM analyses are performed using PASCAL on the variables such as pre-service inspection model, crack geometry, fracture toughness curve and irradiation embrittlement prediction equation. The results showed that the good perfomance inspection model had a significant effect on the fracture probability and reduced it by more than 3 orders of magnitude. The fracture probability calculated by the fracture toughness estimation method in Japan was about 2 orders of magnitude lower than that by the USA method. It was found that the treatment of a semi-elliptical crack in PASCAL reduced the conservatism in a conventional method that it is transformed into an infinite length crack.