Publications Details
DOE-sponsored cable aging research at Sandia National Laboratories
Cables have been identified as critical components requiring detailed technical evaluation for extending the lifetime of Light Water Reactors beyond 40 years. This paper highlights some of the DOE-sponsored cable aging studies currently underway at Sandia. These studies are focused on two important issues: the validity of the often-used Arrhenius thermal aging prediction method and methods for predicting lifetimes in combined thermal-radiation environments. Accelerated thermal aging results are presented for three cable jacket and insulation materials, which indicate that hardening of the outside surface has an Arrhenius temperature dependence and correlates well with reductions in ultimate tensile elongation. This suggests that the indentor approach is a promising NDE technique for cable jacket and unjacketed insulation materials installed in thermally-dominated regions of nuclear power plants.