Fracture toughness of five different reactor pressure vessel steels was characterized in the transition temperature region by the ASTM E1921-97 standard method using Charpy-sized small specimens. T he predominant fracture mode of the tested steels was transgranular cleavage in the test conditions. A statistical analysis based on the Weibull distribution was applied to the interpretation of the scattered fracture toughness data. The size-dependence of the measured fracture toughness values was also well predicted by means of the Weibull probabilistic analysis. The measured fracture toughness transition curves followed the temperature-dependence of the ASTM master curve within the expected scatter bands. Therefore, the fracture toughness characteristics in the transition region could be described by a single parameter, so-called the reference temperature (T。), for a given steel. The determined reference temperatures of the tested materials could not be correlated with the conventional index temperatures from Charpy impact tests.