The ATHENA thematic network was the main project of the AMES (Ageing Materials European Strategy) European network in the Fifth Euratom Framework Programme (FP5). The objectives of ATHENA (AMES Thematic Network on Ageing) were to summarise the state of the art and edit guidelines on important issues like:
- The definition of the technical areas of cooperation and activities needed to be in place to ensure a reliable remaining lifetime assessment of a VVER reactor pressure vessel
- The master curve and its applications
- Annealing of VVER-440 reactor pressure vessels, re-embrittlement models validation after annealing and other open issues in embrittlement of VVER type reactors
- Understanding of irradiation embrittlement (effect of chemical composition and irradiation variables on embrittlement rate in reactor pressure vessel steels)
- Synergy between ageing mechanisms (mainly thermal ageing).
The working method was to entrust the evaluation of these issues to a critical mass of experts working in sub-groups (work packages), mainly by means of workshops. The main idea was to optimise the use of existing information obtained in different frameworks (European R&D projects, national projects, TACIS-PHARE, bilateral cooperation projects), since the limited funding of the project did not allow new research work. The project was rather successful in gathering existing information that was unpublished and property of the ATHENA participating organisations. The results obtained in the different work packages and the recommendations for future work are
summarised in the next paragraphs.