Fatigue Check of Nuclear Safety Class 1 Reactor Coolant Pipe

Fatigue and thermal ratcheting analyses of nuclear safety Class 1 reactor coolant pipe in a nuclear power plant were independently carried out in this paper. The software used for calculation is ROCOCO, which is based on RCC-M code. The difference of nuclear safety Class 1 pipe fatigue evaluation between RCC-M code and ASME code was compared. The main aspects of comparison include the calculation scoping of fatigue design, the calculation method of primary plus secondary stress intensity, the elastic-plastic correction coefficient calculation, and the dynamic load combination method etc. By correcting inconsistent algorithm of ASME code within ROCOCO, the fatigue usage factor and thermal ratcheting design margin of 65 mm and 55 mm wall thickness of the pipe were obtained. The results show that the minimum wall thickness of the pipe must exceed 55 mm and the design value of the thermal ratcheting of 55 mm wall thickness reaches 95% of the allowable value.