Stress corrosion cracking (SCC) is the major concern in the dry storage of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) for the potential of developing through-wall penetration that breaches the confinement boundary provided by the storage canisters, especially for those in the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installations (ISFSIs) in the coastal regions with chloride-rich environments.  A large stainless steel plate of 51×46 cm containing a circumferential weld was cut from a full-size SNF canister for conducting chloride-induced stress corrosion cracking (CISCC) experiment.  A set of part-through-wall and through-wall starter notches were fabricated by electrical discharge machining (EDM) in the welding residual stress (WRS) region.  Stress intensity factors were calculated with American Petroleum Institute (API) 579 procedure to provide insight of crack initiation and growth under WRS field.  Dry salt of 2.3 g/m^2^ chloride was applied on the large plate specimen surface and allowed to deliquesce naturally under laboratory controlled constant 75% relative humidity (RH) at an ambient room temperature of 22 °C.  General corrosion including pitting has occurred, but cracking has not been observed after 7 months of exposure.  Two EDM starter cracks have now been isolated for simultaneous experiment with extra salt loading.  This paper reports the interim results of the CISCC large plate experiment.


Ciscc Experiment of a Large Plate Sectioned From a Spent Nuclear Fuel Canister

Division / Sponsors: 
Pressure Vessels & Piping (PVP)


Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/PVP/PVP2020/volume/83815

PVP2020 - Virtual Conference

Supporting the need among researchers worldwide for additional online and multimedia content, ASME now offers the ASME Conference Video Collection. This platform will collect and provide long-term access to conference presentation videos, encompassing all technology areas within ASME's technical conference and events program. About 30,000-40,000 engineers across all mechanical engineering and related disciplines participate in ASME conferences each year. This includes authors of approximately 6,000 to 8,000 technical papers published by ASME, the majority of whom also submit video presentations for our virtual conferences. The video collection will be available as an add-on to existing product packages or as a separate subscription.