PNNL

Abstract

Baffle-former bolts in pressurized water reactors (PWRs) tend to degrade with aging, partially due to radiation-induced hardening and also due to the often complex stress history of the bolt in response to time-dependent and spatial gradients in temperature and neutron flux-spectra that can alter the stress distribution of the bolts. The time-integrated stresses must play some role in bolt cracking, however, and therefore it is of interest to study the time dependence of bolt stresses even for idealized cases. These stresses have been quantified in the present analysis using newly developed material constitutive equations for swelling and creep at light-water reactor (LWR)-relevant temperatures and dose rates. ABAQUS finite element calculations demonstrate that irradiation creep in the absence of void swelling tends to relax bolt tension before 10 dpa. Subsequent differential swelling leads to an increase in bolt tension, but only to stresses below the yield strength and usually below the initial bolt loading. Various assumed bolt replacement scenarios are considered with respect to their consequences on future failure possibilities.