Even though industry efforts have been quite effective in reducing the number of piping and equipment failures caused by Flow Accelerated Corrosion, piping and components will continue to degrade as plants age. Guidelines on where and how to inspect (software predictions), how to perform chemistry improvements to reduce damage rates, and proposals of material upgrades for replaced components are challenged by new economic studies, reduced time outages, and personnel aging.Events over the past years on degradations and incidents due to Flow Accelerated Corrosion (FAC) in Nuclear Power Plants (NPP), such as :Mihama accident in 2004, Benchmark of the Framatome's Owners Group in 2005 on the existing prediction softwares, IAEA International Conference on Flow Accelerated Corrosion in Moscow in 2009, EdF's International Conferences on Flow Accelerated Corrosion in France in 2008 and in 2010, have lead the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to organise a “Co-ordinated Research Project (CRP) on elaboration of Flow Accelerated Corrosion guidelines and benchmarking of prediction tools”. The IAEA announced this project at the Moscow conference on FAC in April 2009 and in the France conference in 2010 .
The overall objective is to provide participants and the industry with: references and boundary conditions for the use of the available prediction tools; a document to support the development of a solid technical base and serve as a guideline for FAC Programme.
Elaboration of a FAC Guideline
Ensure the correct application of prediction tools. A benchmarking performed with the developers of FAC prediction software using actual results obtained from plants (for one phase flow and two phase flow) that do not use the software shall be performed. In case of discrepancies between the predictive results, possible explanations should be identified, described and discussed. The next step will be the end users will perform their calculations using their software or other calculation methods, which shall be analysed, discussed, explained and assessed by the developers whenever discrepancies are encountered.
Perform tests in research laboratories (test rigs) working on FAC issues to improve investigation techniques and avoid overlapping of researches and optimization of results
Through the CRP, international experts were gathered to share experience and collaborate on relevant topics. Welcome and active collaboration resulted in the development of two draft documents.
The CRP was relevant and the exchange of information was welcomed by the participating experts.