Examination requirements in the nuclear power industry demand rigorous attention to the use and application of NDE technology. The ability to detect, size, and characterize flaws in nuclear plant materials and components provides an early warning system— often years in advance—for possible problems.

Our Performance Demonstration (PD) Laboratory provides the means by which people, procedures, and equipment are qualified to perform specific examinations required by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Section XI (Rules for Inservice Inspection of Nuclear Power Plant Components).

To comply with Appendix VIII of Section XI the nuclear industry established the Performance Demonstration Initiative (PDI) in the early 1990s. Based on our extensive NDE expertise and capabilities, the nuclear industry selected EPRI to develop and administer the testing program. Since then, the EPRI PD team have helped several other countries satisfy their own performance demonstration requirements, including Japan, Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UAE and Taiwan.

EPRI's performance demonstration team has provided global support for members including:

• Leveraging EPRI PD resources

• Developing technical justifications to bridge differences between varying non-US qualification methodologies

• Providing direct support in developing qualification concepts

• Applying EPRI develop test specimen design and flaw making technology

• Providing regulatory support

• Facilitating technology transfer

• Providing site support during implementation

While the Appendix VIII scope addresses only piping, pressure vessels and bolting at nuclear power plants, our Performance Demonstration Laboratory goes much further. The laboratory develops and evaluates NDE techniques encompassing reactor upper head penetrations in pressurized water reactors, boiling water reactor internals, and various advanced manufacturing applications.

Effective qualification also depends on realistic test samples. These samples encompass various weld types, different materials, assorted types of nozzles, reactor vessel sections, bolting, and piping. We benchmark these samples' NDE responses against the responses of actual flaws found in the field to ensure their applicability. Because an individual qualification test for personnel could require the use of several mockups, the ability to offer a diversity of tests is important and EPRI has them on hand.

Our inventory consists of more than 700 test samples:

An array of different components, including piping, nozzles, reactor vessel sections, and bolting

Different kinds of piping samples fabricated using various materials such as austenitic, ferritic, and nickel alloys. In addition, to standard piping welds, the program also includes weld overlay repair mock-ups for similar and dissimilar metal welds. The program also has a larger inventory of full scale clad ferritic reactor pressure vessel (RPV) mock-ups for both Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) and Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) applications.

A range of pipe sizes, from 2" to 50"

A variety of implanted flaws—actual and simulated— including thermal fatigue cracking, mechanical fatigue cracking, and stress corrosion cracking

The centralized availability and management of hundreds of test samples means that individual nuclear power plants do not have to buy and stock their own, saving the industry an estimated $40 million.

Equipment:

• Zetec Dynaray 256-256 element phased array UT data acquisition system

• Zetec Dynaray Lite 64-64 element phased array UT data acquisition system

• Zetec Zscan UT conventional UT data acquisition system (8 channel LEMO)

• MicroTomo Conventional Encoded Ultrasonic Instruments

• Z-Scan UT 4-Channel Conventional Ultrasonic Instrument

• Titan data collection and analysis laptops

• High Performance collection and analysis laptop for 3D data collection and analysis

• High Performance collection and analysis laptops for collection of UT Simulator data files

• High Performance Graphics Workstation to handle 3D UT Merge Data

• 6-axis robotic scanning arm and controllers

  • Custom stand for 6-axis robotic scanning arm

• Stiffness and stability upgrades for RPV Upper Head Penetration Scanner

• Mobility upgrades for scanning stations

• Set of automated scanner guide / scanning rings - with later modifications

• Ultrasonic Testing (UT) Simulators