To adjust the oscillation of renewable energy sources in the discontinuous generation of electricity,power plants will be used to stabilize the fluctuations. Power plants will start and stop frequently in the fluctuations,which exacerbated the fatigue creep damage of turbine rotor material,thus shorted the life of the power plants. In this paper,the progress in research onturbine rotor material have been introduced,and it is summarized that the damage evolution of rotor steel under low cyclic creep-fatigue loading and thermomechanical loading during start-up and shut-down process of ultra-super critical（ USC） steam turbine. In addition,several life assessment models used widely in engineering practice have been proposed. It provides a theoretical basis for optimizing the design,re-engineering and monitoring of the USC power plant components.