Review of INCEFA-SCALE project advances in environmentally assisted fatigue in pressurized water reactors

This paper provides an overview of the INCEFA-SCALE H2020 project. It is a 5-year project, which began in October 2020, whose main objective is to improve the ability of predicting the lifetime of Nuclear Power Plants components subjected to environmental assisted fatigue. Its strategy is: 1) developing a comprehensive mechanistic understanding through a detailed examination of tested specimens and data mining; and 2) testing focused on particular aspects of component-scale cyclic loading. The project has created tools to survey the fatigue data from different finished projects. The testing programme is now underway and it is focused on studying the effect of variable amplitude loading, environment, surface condition, and geometry on the fatigue life of stainless-steel specimens.