Flow-Assisted Corrosion in Nuclear Power Plants

The flow-assisted corrosion, or flow-accelerated corrosion (FAC) is one of the major piping degradation mechanisms in aging nuclear power plants and it has been identified as a research area under the Light Water Reactor Sustainability program at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). While every nuclear power plant in US has a dedicated flow-assisted corrosion management program, there are several areas where the management of flow assisted corrosion can be improved. One of such areas is on-line corrosion monitoring which can significantly reduce maintenance inspections and contribute to improvement of economic efficiency of nuclear power plants. The proliferation of low cost sensor modalities such as strain fiber optics sensors and noninvasive concentration sensors, allowed development of on-line nonintrusive monitoring techniques, which can complement or replace existing evaluation techniques. The report presents a literature review of the current state-of-the-art in flow-assisted corrosion monitoring, and a research framework to study on-line monitoring techniques. The report addresses the problem on on-line monitoring of flow-assisted corrosion in nuclear power plants.