CANTIA CODE FOR THE PROBABILISTIC ASSESSMENT OF INSPECTION STRATEGIES FOR STEAM GENERATOR TUBES

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) recently developed the CANTIA methodology for probabilistic assessment of inspection strategies for steam generator tubes. Assessment of the conditional probabilities Of tube failures, leak rates, and ultimately risk of exceeding licensing dose limits as an approach used to steam generator tube fitness-for-service assessment has been increasingly used in recent years throughout the nuclear power industry. The ANL/CANTIA code predictions were systematically studied to evaluate the code capability to predict the leak rates through the flawed steam generator tubes. In this evaluation the code models on the crack opening area, the probabilistic models and the critical flow rate models were studied and their applicability to available experimental data base was examined.