Evaluation of crack opening area, leak rate and probabilistic models in CANTIA

Assessment of the conditional probabilities of tube failures, leak rates, and ultimately risk of exceeding licensing dose limits is an approach to steam generator tube fitness-for-service assessment that has begun to be used increasingly in recent years throughout the nuclear power industiy. The c Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) recently developed the CANTIA methodology for probabilistic assessment of inspection strategies for steam generator tubes as a direct effect on the probability of tube failure and priinaiy-to-secondary leak rate. The ANL/CANTIA code predictions were systematically studied to evaluate the code capability to predict the leak rates thmugh 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.