Warm PreStress effect on highly irradiated reactor pressure vessel steel

This study investigates the Warm Prestress (WPS) effect on 16MND5 (A508 Cl3) RPV steel, irradiated up to a fluence of 13·1023n.m-2 (E > 1 MeV) at a temperature of 288 °C, corresponding to more than 60 years of operations in a French Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR). Mechanical properties, including tensile tests with different strain rates and tension-compression tests on notched specimens, have been characterized at unirradiated and irradiated states and used to calibrate constitutive equations to describe the mechanical behavior as a function of temperature and fluence. Irradiation embrittlement has been determined based on Charpy V-notch impact tests and isothermal quasi-static toughness tests. Assessment of WPS effect has been done through various types of thermomechanical loadings performed on CT(0.5 T) specimens. All tests have confirmed the non-failure during the thermo-mechanical transients. Experimental data obtained in this study have been compared to both engineering-based models and to a local approach (Beremin) model for cleavage fracture. It is shown that both types of modeling give good predictions for the effective toughness after warm prestressing.