RPV and Primary Circuit Inspection

Revision of the German Safety Standard KTA 3201.4 for In-service Inspections and
Operational Monitoring of Components of the Primary Circuit in Nuclear Power Plants
B. Neundorf, Vattenfall Europe Nuclear Energy, Germany
H.-R. Bath, Office of the Nuclear Safety Standards Commission, Germany
T. Just, Consultant, Germany

ABSTRACT

The Nuclear Safety Standards Commission (KTA) has the task to specify safety related requirements
in the area of nuclear technology. The standards are issued when a consensus between experts of the
manufacturers and the operators of nuclear power plants, experts authorized by the regulatory
administration and regulators is reached and their application is agreed. The standard KTA 3201.4
(06/99) “Components of the Reactor Coolant Pressure Boundary of Light Water Reactors Part 4: In-
service Inspections and Operational Monitoring” has been under revision since 2004 and updated to
the actual state of science and technology. The main topics of the revision have been:

- the inclusion of recommendations of the German Reactor Safety Commission concerning the
adaption and optimization of non-destructive testing of safety relevant systems and
components with special regard to the qualification of NDT procedures, the verification of
their performance and the sensitivity setting for UT of dissimilar welds and of cladded
surfaces,
- the evaluation of damages and failure of components in nuclear power plants with regard to
in-service inspections and operational monitoring and
- the inclusion of applicable new codes and guidelines.

It is intended to issue the revised code in November 2010. This paper outlines the background
and motivation for the relevant changes and the consequences for the non-destructive testing and
operational monitoring programmes in the German nuclear power plants.

LEGAL POSITION OF KTA-CODES IN GERMANY

The position of the KTA-codes in Germany has to be seen within the context of the judiciary. Figure 1
displays this. On the top level there are legally and partly legally-binding documents, these includes
laws like the Atomic Energy Act. On the next level are ordinances that detail the demands of a law.
Both laws and ordinances are legally binding.
General administrative provisions which are on the level below the laws are only binding for the
administration and usually used to harmonize the work at different levels of government.
Among the non-legally binding documents there are:

- regulatory documents of the Federal Ministry of Environment (BMU),

- recommendations of the Reactor-Safety Commission (RSK) and
- nuclear technical standards issued by the Nuclear Safety Standards Commission (KTA).

This is the level where KTA 3201.4 is situated. The lowest level consists of technical standards
e.g. DIN, DKE, VDE, EN, DIN ISO, DIN IEC and others.
 The KTA code 3201 “Components of the Reactor Coolant Pressure Boundary of Light Water
Reactors” consists of four parts:

- Part 1: Materials and Product Forms

- Part 2: Design and Analysis
- Part 3: Manufacture
- Part 4: Inservice Inspections and Operational Monitoring

The revision of Part 4 is discussed in this paper.

Presently, the KTA Program of Standards is comprised of 106 different standards. 91 of these
nuclear safety standards are already issued and 15 standards are in preparation. In addition, 50
standards are in the revision process. Altogether, 65 nuclear safety standards are in development.

Atomic
Energy Act
Ordinances

Safety Criteria
KTA-Safety Standards
& RSK-Guidelines

Other Technical Standards

(DIN, VDE, IEC, ISO, EN-Standards)
Figure 1 - Hierarchy of Regulations and Standards in Germany

REVISION OF KTA 3201.4

The safety standards of the Nuclear Safety Standards Commission (KTA) have the task of specifying
those safety related requirements which shall be met with regard to precautions to be taken in
accordance with the state of science and technology against the damage arising from the construction
and operation of the facility in order to attain the protection goals specified in the Atomic Energy Act
and the Radiological Protection Ordinance (StrlSchV) and which are further detailed in the “Safety
Criteria for Nuclear Power Plants” and in the “Guidelines for the Assessment of the Design of PWR
Nuclear Power Plants against Incidents pursuant to Sec. 28 para 3 of the Radiological Protection
Ordinance – Incident Guidelines”.
The pressure boundary of the primary circuit has the task of safely retaining the reactor coolant.
To ensure that this task is fulfilled during the service life of the reactor, in-service inspections and
operational monitoring are performed at specified time intervals to demonstrate the integrity of the
pressure boundary and the functional capability of the safeguards against excessive pressure.

Motivation for Revision of the code

As a general rule, a KTA code should be revised after five years. The work to revise KTA 3201.4
started in 2004 and due to intense discussions took nearly six years for revision.

During the revision of KTA 3201.4 international events were evaluated among these were:

- 1998 : leakages in steam generator-tubes in two NPP due to fretting

- 2000: cracking in a dissimilar weld in a MCL nozzle; disbonding (fabrication flaw);
detected at ISI 1992 interpreted wrongly
 - 2001: cracking in dissimilariInconel welds due to PWSCC
- 2001: break of spray line at RPV head; hydrogen explosion;
- 2002: degradation (cavity) of RPV head; boron acid corrosion of ferritic steel
- 2002: break of a thermosleeve; damage due to vibrations accompanied with fabrication
flaw
- 2002: flaws on SG feed water nozzles; corrosion
- 2005: axial cracking in SG tubes; ODSCC (IGSCC and IGA)

Recommendations issued in 2002 by the German Reactor Safety Commission on optimizing the
NDE of safety-relevant systems were also discussed during the revision of KTA 3201.4 and mostly
included in the code.
As stated before, it is the goal of KTA 3201.4 to monitor causes and consequences of damage
mechanisms. During the monitoring of causes both:

- parameters relevant for the integrity of the primary circuit by a standard instrumentation and
- the chemical water quality for primary and secondary side
are investigated, while the monitoring of consequences comprises of
- leakage monitoring from
o primary circuit to the outside
o primary to the secondary circuit
- loose parts monitoring as well as
- monitoring of the vibration behaviour of the primary circuit components for the early
detection of changes.

In order to assure the component integrity, KTA 3201.4 demands also in-service-inspections.
These include:

- non-destructive examinations of the external and internal surfaces and of the volume of the
pressure retaining wall
- integral visual examinations to evaluate the general condition during regular plant
inspection
- pressure tests as integral loading test
- functional tests addressing the safeguards against excessive pressure.

General changes

As a general survey, the following topics that are related to non-destructive testing were addressed
during the revision of KTA 3201.4:

- Requirements for the selection of NDE-methods and –techniques

- Requirements for assessing non-destructive tests to determine whether they are capable of
attaining their objectives. According to this, non-standardized non-destructive testing
methods and techniques generally have to be qualified according to ENIQ as outlined in the
German VGB-ENIQ-Guideline R516
- Specific requirements for ultrasonic testing
- New Requirements for testing the base material of austenitic steels (TGSCC / IGSCC)
- Requirements on the working conditions of NDE-personnel were added but only in general
terms
o Particular conditions (temperature, noise, radiation) are defined in ordinances for
industrial safety and radiation protection and there fore need not to be addressed in the
KTA code
o Details can only be fixed for special test problems
- Requirements for qualification and certification of test personnel were added
- Latest versions of applicable DIN and other standards were included
 The requirements for operational monitoring were also revised:

- the assessment of operational monitoring data also has to include an investigation of the
causes
- piping has to be supervised for unobstructed displacement
- monitoring data has to be evaluated promptly, in order to be able to take the necessary
actions
- the requirements for the assessment of fatigue were written more precisely
- the requirements for the monitoring of the predicted calculatory fatigue were adapted from
KTA 3201.2
- the requirement for the monitoring and detection of hydrogen concentrations due to
radiolytic reactions were specified more precisely

Examples for Changes in NDE

One of the topics of the recommendations of the Reactor Safety Commission was to describe the
requirements for the testing of cladded components more precisely. If the cladding is considered in
the RPV‘s proof of equivalent safety margin against brittle failure, then notch No.3 in Figure 2 has to
be used. In all other cases it is sufficient to use notch No. 2.

Wallthickness s in mm 8≤ s ≤ 20 20 < s ≤ 40 s > 40

Depth of Notch in mm 1,5 2 3

• Notch No.1 : depth = D+ 2 * 3mm

• Notch No.2 : depth = D+ 3mm

• Notch No.3 : depth ≤ D – 1 mm

Notches • Notch No.4 : depth = 0,5 * D

Cladding

Ferritic base material

Area of inspection

Figure 2 - Sensitivity Calibration for the Reactor Pressure Vessel

Safe-end welds of BWR‘s (dissimilar metal welds)

The requirements for the non-destructive testing of the safe-end welds of boiling water reactors were
also adapted and written more precisely. The scope is 100% of the welds in 5 years and testing is to be
performed with ultrasound. The testing is directed to the surfaces and the near-surface-regions and it
is done for longitudinal and transversal defect orientations. For welds with:

- nickel-alloys (inconel-type) in the inner surface or

- where the austenitic cladding over a nickel weld is less than 3 mm also an UT from the
opposite direction for transversal defect orientations is demanded.
 The directions of insonification can be seen in Fig. 3. Special emphasis was given to the region
between buttering and weld material.

Austenitic Steel Ferritic Steel

Austenitic Steel Ferritic Steel

Buttering

Austenitic Steel Ferritic Steel

Buttering Cladding
Figure 3 - Ultrasonic testing of dissimilar metal welds

Steam Generator Tubing

The eddy current testing of steam generator tubes has to be perfomed according to DIN 25435 part 6.
This includes the following requirements:

- Defects at inner and outer surface are to be considered

- Longitudinal and transversal orientation of defects
- Local wall thickness reductions

The scope of testing is 20% of all tubes of each steam generator to be inspected in 5 years.
Former version of code demanded 10% in 5 years, but in order to improve the statistical safety the
scope was increased. Half of the steam generators are to be tested in 3 years and positions with higher
damage potential have also to be considered.

ENIQ-Qualification of NDE

The ENIQ methodology was included in the KTA-code. In Germany the recommendations of the
ENIQ-methodology are laid down in a VGB-Guideline R516 [1]. This document had first been issued
in 2000 and was revised in 2010 in order to include operational experience from the last years. The
VGB-guideline reveals the practice of regulatory and 3rd-party assessment of NDE in Germany.
According to the revised KTA 3201.4 and the VGB-Guideline R516 previous qualifications
where the applicability is confirmed by 3rd-party expert need not to be qualified again! On the other
hand, non-destructive testing methods and techniques which are not sufficiently described in a
standard are in general to be qualified according to the German VGB ENIQ-Guideline R 516.
CONCLUSIONS

The German KTA Code 3201.4 for the in-service inspections and operational monitoring of
components of the primary circuit in nuclear power plants was revised from 2004 until 2010. An
evaluation of safety relevant events in nuclear power plants in the last years lead to new requirements
in the following fields:

- Dissimilar metal weld testing

- NDT of cladded components
- NDT of heat exchanger tubes
- Requirements for qualification
- Evaluation of findings
- Operational Monitoring

REFERENCES

1) VGB Powertech, Guideline R516, 2nd issue 2010, Methodik für das Vorgehen bei der
Qualifizierung von zerstörungsfreien Prüfungen (methodology for conducting qualifications of
non-destructive testing)