a b s t r a c tThe leak before break (LBB) concept is widely used in designing pipe lines in nuclear power plants. According to the concept, the amount of leaking liquid from a pipe should be more than the minimum detectable leak rate of a leak detection system before catastrophic failure occurs. Therefore, accurate estimation of the leak rate is important to evaluate the validity of the LBB concept in pipe line design. In this paper, a program was developed to estimate the leak rate through circumferential cracks in pipes in nuclear power plants using the HenryeFauske flow model and modified HenryeFauske flow model. By using the developed program, the leak rate was calculated for a circumferential crack in a sample pipe, and the effect of the flow model on the leak rate was examined. Treating the crack morphology parameters as random variables, the statistical behavior of the leak rate was also examined. As a result, it was found that the crack morphology parameters have a strong effect on the leak rate and the statistical behavior of the leak rate can be simulated using normally distributed crack morphology parameters.

:Recently a new version of PRO-LOCA program was released. Using the program, failure probability of pipes can be evaluated considering fatigue and/or stress corrosion crack growth and the effects of various parameters on the integrity of pipes in nuclear power plants can be evaluated quantitatively. The analysis results can be used to establish an inspection plan and to examine the effects of important parameters in a maintenance plan. In this study, sensitivity analyses were performed using the program for several important parameters including sampling method, initial crack size, number of initial fabrication flaws, operation temperature, inspection interval, operation temperature and nominal applied bending stress. The effect of parameters on the leak and rupture probability of pipes was evaluated due to fatigue or stress corrosion crack growth.