Development of remote field ECT sensor for high temperature steam generator tubes

Commercialized Fast Breeder Reactor (FBR)s have to achieve competitive unit price in electricity generation with other energy sources by reducing not only construction and fuel cost but also operation and maintenance cost, in order to be introduced in line with market principles. Operation and maintenance cost cannot be reduced until plant utilization factor is enhanced by shortening duration times of periodical inspections and expanding continuous operation periods. Critical paths in periodical inspections should be shortened to reduce entire duration time of a periodical inspections should be shortened to reduce entire duration time of a periodical inspection. and reduction of the inspection time is desired. Reflecting this background, as a research activity within the Feasibility Study for Future Commercialized FBRs, technology for volumetric inspection of SG heat transfer tubes in high temperature is being developed, in order to reduce the inspection time by skipping cooling down process. This report describes a series of experiments of heat-resistant remote field (RF) ECT probe to evaluate its defect detection performance on outer surface of heat transfer tubes. The results are summarized as listed below: (1) Defects can be detected in high temperature if sodium is drained, but cannot be detected if tube is submerged in liquid sodium. (2) The goal detection performance against round wall thinning is thought to be possibly achieved, because the measured S/N ratio exceeds 9.3 in detecting artificial round wall thinning with 10 mm width and depth beyond 10%. (3) Round wall slits can possibly detected because the S/N ratio exceeded 3.7 in detecting artificial round wall slits with 0.5 mm width and depth beyond 15%. (4) Defects of partial wall thinning are difficult to be detected, because the S/N ratio was less than 2.0 in detecting partial wall thinning with 10 mm width and 10 mm axial length and depth up to 20%. (5) In detecting defects of 12Cr steel tubes by the RF-ECT probe, maximum voltage amplitude is obtained with the frequency is 500 MHz. Though the working sensitivity tends to degrade with faster scanning speed, does not significantly differ between 20 mm/sec and 40 mm/sec. (author)