Reliability of Water Jet Peening as Residual Stress Improvement Method for Alloy 600 PWSCC Mitigation

As a countermeasure against high residual stress, we have developed some residual stress improvement methods, as Water Jet Peening (WJP) [1] [2] for components installed in water, Shot Peening by Ultrasonic-wave vibration (USP) for components installed in air, and outer surface irradiated Laser Stress Improvement Process (L-SIP) [3] for components being able to approach from outer surface only. WJP is applied to Reactor Vessel (RV) outlet/inlet nozzle safe-end joints (Alloy600 weld metal), RV Bottom Mounted Instrument (BMI) inner surface and J-weld. Especially, it is difficult to apply BMI because BMI inner surface is very narrow space (inner diameter; approximately 10–15mm) and BMI J-weld is complicated 3-dimensional form. On the occasion of actual application, we carry out the verification tests and check that a stress improvement was effective as one of PWSCC mitigation. And the compressive stress induced by WJP is verified to continue to exist under actual plant operation conditions. Thus, in addition to replacing the material with Alloy 690, converting the residual stress to the compressive can prevent the occurrence of PWSCC.