Flow-accelerated Corrosion Evaluation Computer Program CHECWORKS and Its Application to Ageing Management in Nuclear Power Plants

Flow-accelerated corrosion (FAC) is one of the predominant failure causes of the secondary circuit pipelines in nuclear power plants (NPPs), severely affecting the safe operation. CHECWORKS is a commercial FAC evaluation computer program developed from empirical models by Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) for the sake of predicting the wear rate, the water chemistry and the thermal hydraulic parameters pertaining to FAC. In this paper, the history, application and the features of CHECWORKS are reviewed, which will play an active role not only in the propagation of this program in China but also in its application to the aging management of NPPs.