Reconstitution of V-Notched Charpy Impact Specimen Made of Short Insert

Reconstitution in this paper means to constitute the original size V-notched Charpy impact specimen, which is made of the irradiated insert cut out from broken piece and un-irradiated tabs welded to the insert. It is a promising technique to secure an adequate number of surveillance specimens for long-term operation of nuclear power plants. Every Japanese nuclear power plant has its own surveillance test program, and is operated considering its unique surveillance test results along with the general reduction tendency of fracture toughness. This practice should be continued and enhanced if possible, after the full use of originally installed specimens, because its fracture toughness is lower than before. Reconstitution of V-notched Charpy impact specimens to the original shape by using a short insert was studied. Charpy absorption energy is generally shifted by reconstitution, if the insert length is as short as 10 mm. Reconstitution with a short insert is necessary when the transverse property of the original specimen is required although only the longitudinal surveillance specimen is installed as in some early constructed reactor pressure vessels in Japan. This case is important when the reactor pressure vessel is suspected to be a so-called low upper shelf toughness reactor pressure vessel. The minimum required insert length to avoid affect on the specimen properties depends on the Charpy absorption energy of the insert and reconstitution weld condition. Correlation between Charpy absorption energy and plastic deformation size, and short time annealing properties of irradiated pressure vessel steels were investigated. A method to evaluate the minimum required insert length was proposed, which depends on the expected Charpy absorption energy and thermal transient during reconstitution. It was demonstrated that the reconstituted specimens of 10 mm-long irradiated inserts, whose upper shelf absorption energy was 69J and required insert length was 9.5mm, showed little shift of upper shelf absorption energy.