Corrosion monitoring techniques for detection of crack initiation under simulated light water reactor conditions

Monitoring the early stages of environmentally assisted cracking under light water reactor conditions is a challenging task but is getting more important in the context of a proactive aging management approach. From a rather large number of available corrosion monitoring techniques, only very few appear suitable for the detection of crack initiation and application in high temperature water environments (y300uC). The most promising of these techniques (electrochemical noise, acoustic emission, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, alternating/direct current potential drop and high temperature imaging autoclave) are summarised and assessed in the current paper.