Activities for gaining insight into IASCC and continuous evaluation of in-service inspection data

The report is a documentation of the important results of various international studies conducted to gain insight into the occurrence, mechanisms, and characteristic features of irradiation-assisted stress corrosion cracking, IASCC, as well as measures preventing IASCC in light water reactors. The major information can be summarised as follows: the number of cases of damage clearly induced by IASCC is low, as compared to the damage induced by intergranular stress corrosion cracking, IGSCC. In fact, recent information from a review of documented stress corrosion cracking damage of BWR type reactor internals reveals that an increasing number of cracks formerly thought to have been caused by IASCC now can be attributed to ICSCC as the most probable cause. Generally speaking, current knowledge of the impact of ionizing radiation on the corrosion resistance of LWR materials is rather insufficient. (orig./CB)