CHARPY SPECIMEN RECONSTITUTION AS A MEANS OF PROVIDING DATA FOR PLEX LICENSING PURPOSES

In order to extract more information from surveillance programmes, the technique of Charpy specimen reconstitution has been implemented at t he SCK/CEN Laboratories. Initially, a qualification was obtained for t he reconstitution of new specimens from half broken ones of unirradiat ed plate and weld metal and of irradiated plate metal. This technique, thus starting from pieces of about 10 mm X 10 mm X 22 mm, was success fully applied to the reconstitution of weld specimens from aged weld a nd from the weld part of aged heat affected zone specimens. It will be further used to reconstitute irradiated weld samples and to make Cv s pecimens from the heads of irradiated weld tensile specimens. By chang ing the welding parameters it has been found possible to reduce the we ld affected zone significantly. This result is applied in an attempt t o reconstitute specimens from 10 mm X 10 mm X 10 mm pieces. One import ant application is, e.g. to obtain T-L oriented specimens from origina lly L-T oriented Charpy samples.