Fatigue monitoring in Nuclear Power Plants

This paper summarizes fatigue monitoring methods and surveys their application in the nuclear power industry. The paper is based on a review of the technical literature. Two main reasons for fatigue monitoring are more frequent occurrence of some transients than that assumed in the fatigue design analysis and the discovery of stressors that were not included in the fatigue design analysis but may cause significant fatigue damage at some locations. One fatigue monitoring method involves use of plant operating data and procedures to update the fatigue usage. Another method involves monitoring of plant operating parameters using existing, or if needed, supplementary plant instrumentation for online computation of fatigue usage. Use of fatigue monitoring has better defined the operational transients. Most operational transients have been found less severe and fewer in numbers than anticipated in the design fatigue analysis. Use of fatigue monitoring has assisted in quantifying newly discovered stressors and has helped in detecting the presence of thermal stratification of unsuspected locations