The steam generator tubes of nuclear power plants are pressure boundaries, and if tubes are leaked, the coolant with the radioactive materials was flowed out from the primary system to the secondary system and polluted the plant and the air. Recently most crack defects of tubes are stress corrosion cracks and these defects are located in expansion transition area, sludge pile-up region, and U-bend area. The most effective one of crack initiation factors in expansion transition area and U-bend area is the residual stress. According to the experiences of Korea standard nuclear plants(Optimized Power Reactor-1000), they had the stress corrosion cracks at the tube expansion transition area in early operating stage and especially lots of circumferential cracks were occurred. Therefore in this study, the distributions and conditions of residual stresses by tube expansion methods were compared and the dominant reason of a specific direction was examined.