Operating data monitoring and fatigue evaluation systems and findings for boiling water reactors in Japan Original Research Article

The reactor pressure vessel (RPV) is one of the most critical components of a boiling water reactor (BWR) when utilities think about plant life extension (PLEX). Design stress analysis sometimes reports very high fatigue usage factors for such portions of RPVs as stud bolt, feedwater nozzle and support skirt. In order to evaluate design margin and to eliminate excessive conservatism in this design analysis to pave the way for PLEX, Japanese BWR utilities jointly with BWR manufacturers in Japan established a programme (1) to acquire plant operational data on line for specific parameters used in stress analysis, (2) to evaluate margin in the design using measured plant data best estimate boundary conditions for stress analysis, and (3) to establish a simplified fatigue analysis method for BWR RPV. A plant data acquisition system, named OPEDAS, has been developed and installed in Tokyo Electric Power Companyʹs 1100 MWe BWR at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant. Best estimate stress analysis using measured in-plant data has been carried out and the results show considerable margin in fatigue usage factor over the design. A simplified fatigue analysis method using in-plant data has been developed with the Greenʹs function, although some limitations have been identified for its use.