This paper provides the fully plastic J solutions for circumferential cracked pipes with inner, semi- elliptical surface cracks, subject to internal pressure and global bending. Solutions are given in the form of two different approaches, the GEF/EPRl approach and the reference stress approach. For the GE/EPRl approach, the plastic influence functions for fully plastic J are tabulated based on extensive 3-D FE calculations using the Ramberg-Osgood (R-O) materials, covering a wide range of pipe and crack geometries. The developed GEf/EPRl-type fully plastic J estimation equations are then re-formulated using the concept of the reference stress approach for wider applications. Based on the FE results, optimized reference load solutions for the definition of the reference stress are found for internal pressure and for global bending. Advantages of the reference stress based approach over the GE/EPRl-type approach are fully discussed. Validation of the proposed reference stress based J estimation equations will be given in Part II, based on 3-D elastic-plastic or elastic creep FE results using typical tensile properties of stainless steels and generalized creep- deformation behaviours.