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LONGLIFE (“Treatment of long term irradiation embrittlement effects in RPV safety assessment”) was a collaborative project of the 7th Framework Programme of EURATOM under the umbrella of NULIFE/NUGENIA, aiming at an improved understanding of irradiation effects in reactor pressure vessel steels under conditions representative of long term operation. The LONGLIFE project was completed by the end of January 2014. The paper gives an overview of the main project results and their implications for future research, as discussed at the final project workshop. The microstructural database for neutron-irradiated RPV steels was extended considerably and existing gaps on mechanical property data were closed. Indications of late blooming effects (LBE) were found in some cases, but clear criteria for the occurrence/exclusion in terms of irradiation conditions and chemical composition have still to be developed. The commonly accepted trend, that low flux and low irradiation temperature promotes LBE, is supported. A significant flux effect on the size of defect clusters was observed in two high Cu weld materials, while the changes of mechanical properties are not affected by the neutron flux. The database requires completion in particular for low-Cu RPV steels. The shift of reference temperature T 0 over the thickness location of a VVER-440 welding seam does not follow the prediction Russian code, because of the strong variation of the intrinsic weld bead structure. Therefore, the effect of the initial microstructure and of the heterogeneity on the radiation behaviour has to be addressed in future works. Existing embrittlement trend curves models were applied to the LONGLIFE data base. None of the trend curves could predict the behaviour of the entirety of the LONGLIFE materials sufficiently. A guideline for monitoring radiation embrittlement during life extension periods was developed.

This paper presents and describes key open issues which are being debated nowadays by experts in the field, and for which clarification is essential for a safe operation of the nuclear power plants during life extension. Notably: late blooming effects in low Cu steels; effects of Cu, Ni, Mn, and P on the irradiated microstructure and on hardening and embrittlement; use of material test reactor data for assessment in power reactors (including flux and spectrum effects); Master Curve versus Unified Curve and fracture toughness behavior of highly irradiated material; embrittlement in RPV zones out of the traditional beltline (“the expanding beltline”); embrittlement trend curves at high neutron fluence, where data are scarce; re-embrittlement after annealing.

The increasing age of the European NPPs and envisaged lifetime extensions up to 80 years require an improved understanding of RPV irradiation embrittlement effects connected with long term operation (LTO). Phenomena which might become important at high neutron fluences (such as late blooming effects and flux effects) must be considered adequately in the safety assessments. Therefore the project LONGLIFE was initiated within the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission. The project aims at: i) improved knowledge on LTO phenomena relevant for European reactors; ii) assessment of prediction tools, codes, standards and surveillance guidelines. In the paper, we give an overview of the project structure and the related tasks. Furthermore we present two examples for the experimental evidence of LTO relevant phenomena: the first example is related to the flux dependence of defect cluster formation in a neutron irradiated weld material. We have found that the size of the irradiation induced defects exhibits a flux effect whereas the mechanical properties are almost independent of the flux. The second example refers to the acceleration of irradiation hardening after exceeding a threshold fluence. This effect was observed by means of both small angle neutron scattering (SANS) and tensile testing for low Cu RPV steels irradiated at a temperature of 255 °C. These examples demonstrate that LTO irradiation effects have to be investigated in more detail to guarantee the applicability of the embrittlement surveillance guidelines beyond 40 years of operation.Copyright © 2010 by ASME