ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Feb 2026
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
March 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
January 2026
Latest News
CLEAN SMART bill reintroduced in Senate
Senators Ben Ray Luján (D., N.M.) and Tim Scott (R., S.C.) have reintroduced legislation aimed at leveraging the best available science and technology at U.S. national laboratories to support the cleanup of legacy nuclear waste.
The Combining Laboratory Expertise to Accelerate Novel Solutions for Minimizing Accumulated Radioactive Toxins (CLEAN SMART) Act, introduced on February 11, would authorize up to $58 million annually to develop, demonstrate, and deploy innovative technologies, targeting reduced costs and safer, faster remediation of sites from the Manhattan Project and Cold War.
John R. Weeks
Nuclear Technology | Volume 28 | Number 3 | March 1976 | Pages 348-355
Technical Paper | Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT76-A31517
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The lnconel-600 tubing in operating pressurized water reactor (PWR) steam generators has developed leaks due to intergranular stress corrosion cracking or a general wastage attack, originating from the secondary side of the tubing. Corrosion has been limited to those areas of the steam generators where limited secondary coolant circulation and high heat flux have caused impurities to concentrate. Wastage or pitting attack has always been associated with local concentration of sodium hydrogen phosphates, whereas stress corrosion has been associated with local concentration of sodium or potassium hydroxides. The only instance of stress corrosion originating from the primary side occurred on cold-worked tubing when hydrogen was not added to getter oxygen, and LiOH was not added to raise the pH of the primary coolant. All U.S. PWR manufacturers are now recommending an all-volatile treatment of the secondary coolant, whereas many plants operated until recently using a phosphate treatment. Experience in operating plants has shown, however, that removal of phosphate-rich sludge deposits is difficult, and that further wastage and/or intergranular stress corrosion can develop; the residual sodium phosphates gradually convert by reaction with corrosion product hydroxides to sodium hydroxide, which remains concentrated in the limited flow areas. Improvements in circulation patterns have been achieved by inserting flow baffles in some PWR steam generators. Inservice monitoring by eddy current techniques, as recommended in U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Regulatory Guide 1.83, is useful for detecting corrosion-induced defects in the tubing, but irreproducibility in field examinations can lead to uncertainties in interpreting the results.