PNNL

Abstract

CANDU reactors have been operating for periods up to about 25 years. During this time there are changes to the nuclear reactor core components that are a function of operating environment and time. It is important to know how the properties of critical core components are likely to change over the life of a reactor and therefore their behaviours are characterised long before the end of the reactor design life. Tests are typically conducted in materials test reactors. The behaviour of a material is often characterised as a function of fast neutron fluence and the expected effect of operating time is established by simply extrapolating as a function of fluence. This may be appropriate when the neutron energy spectrum for the materials test reactor matches closely the neutron spectrum where the component resides in the power reactor. However, in cases where the spectrum is very different one has to convert the accumulated dose into a unit that is common in its effect on the material properties. For many property changes in nuclear reactor cores this unit is displacements per atom (dpa).