Nickel alloys are used in the fabrication of nuclear power plants both as wrought components
and as weld materials. Nickel based weld materials include Alloys 82, 182 and 52. Nickel alloys
may suffer environmentally assisted cracking during service in nuclear power plants. Several
factors affect the susceptibility of nickel alloys to cracking in service including internal or
metallurgical factors and external or environmental factors. One of the internal detrimental
factors could be the presence of cold work in the alloy. Superficial cold work may be introduced
into a component during fabrication such as surface grinding. The objective of the present
research was to quantify the damage introduced into an Alloy 82 weld during grinding and how
this damage could be mitigated by subsequent electropolishing. The implications regarding
susceptibility to stress corrosion cracking are also discussed.
Keywords: Nickel based alloys, nuclear power plant, Alloy 82, stress corrosion cracking, surface
modification, compressive stresses