A review of reheat cracking in British Energy's AGRs and the safety case strategy to address this threat

摘要

Reheat cracking associated with as-welded austenitic stainless steel components has been observed in British Energy's Advanced Gas Cooled Reactors (AGRs) This paper reviews the incidents of cracking observed on the plant and demonstrates how these data can be used to rank the susceptibility of different weld geometries. The paper also presents an overview of the generic development programme that is ongoing aimed at developing an understanding of the key parameters that control reheat cracking.Finally the paper presents the generic safety case strategy that has been adopted to address the threat of this cracking mechanism.