Failures of the thermal barriers of 900 MWe reactor coolant pumps

This report describes the anomalies encountered in the thermal barriers of the reactor coolant pumps in French 900 MWe PWR power stations. In addition to this specific problem, it demonstrates how the fortuitous discovery of a fault during a sampling test enabled faults of a generic nature to be revealed in components which were not subject to periodic inspection, the failure of which could seriously affect safety. This example demonstrates the risk which can be associated with the deterioration in areas which are not examined periodically and for which there are no preceding signs which would make early detection of deterioration possible