Exhibition > Insight NDT Equipment Ltd
Insight NDT Equipment Ltd
The Old Cider Mill, Kings Thorn
Herefordshire HR2 8AW
United Kingdom
Phone: +44 (0)1981 541122
Fax: +44 (0)1981 541133
Email: sales@InsightNDT.com
Internet: www.insight-ndt.com
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Insight NDT designs,manufactures and installs - world wide - an extensive range of Ultrasonic, Magnetic Particle and Eddy Current non-destructive testing systems for use in production Quality Control sections of metals processing industries. Emphasis is placed on fitness for purpose, flexibility in accept/reject criteria, test data display storage and retrieval together with ease of use in the workshop. Up to the minute computerised technology is employed to assure continuing stable,reliable and rapid performance.
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Mark Willcox
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Ultrasonic Testing

Equipment

* Flaw detectors
* Sound velocity measurement
* Imaging Systems
* Multi-Channel
* High Frequency Instrumentation
* Application specific software

Automation

* Automated flaw detection
* Rotary probes
* Scanning systems
* Squirter systems
* Fixtures

Transducers (Probes)

* Delay line transducers
* Immersion transducers
* Transducer Arrays
* Dual Element Transducers
* High Frequency Transducers
* Special Design Transducers
* Applications Specific Transducers

Accessories

* Electronic modules
* Digitizer modules
* Pulser/Receiver modules
* Software General
* Software Postprocesing
* Software Data Acquisition

Magnetic Particle Testing

* Field Strenght Gauges
* Meters - Field Strength (Gauss/Tesla Meters)
* Automated Systems
* Units - Mobile (2 kA to 6 kA)
* Units - Stationary
* Units - Wet Horizontal

Miscellaneous

* Magnetising Shot Timer
* AC and/or FWDC magnetising power packs up to 20000 A

Other Methods

Electromagnetic Testing

Eddy Current Instruments

* Crack Detectors (1 kHz to 3 MHz)
* Crack Detectors (3 MHz to 6 MHz)
* Multifrequency Scanners
* ACPD Crack Depth Meter

Eddy Current Systems

* Testers - Bars/Billets
* Testers - Tubing/Pipe

Automatic Ultrasonic Testing

* Fully mechanised and automated Quality Control Systems
* Customized Testing Systems for specific Applications
* Up-grades of existing systems

Magnetic Particle Inspection Systems

* Fully Automated systems
* multi-directional magnetising
* non-contact magnetising
* automatic vision systems
* Computer controlled systems

Eddy current testing sytems

* Fully automatic
* dynamic or static products
* comprehensive data out-put

created 23.05.2003 Views Edit Full Statistics
Exhibition > Insight NDT Equipment Ltd

FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company via AP fileThe Davis- Besse Nuclear Power Station on the shore of Lake Erie near Port Clinton.
Updated at 10:43 p.m
View full sizeOAK HARBOR, Ohio -- Inspectors at the Davis-Besse power plant have found cracking in critical parts that is similar to what caused massive corrosion at the plant eight years ago.

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The FirstEnergy Corp. plant near Toledo has been down since Feb. 28 for regular refueling, maintenance and safety inspections, including ultrasonic inspections of 69 control rod "nozzles" in the reactor lid.
The problem parts are known as "nozzles" because of their shape. They are corrosion-resistant alloy steel tubes that penetrate the reactor's heavy carbon steel lid. They allow reactor operators to adjust the nuclear fission by moving control rods into and out of the reactor core.
The cracked parts pose no threat to the public.
"There are indications of cracking in 13 of 54 nozzles checked so far," FirstEnergy spokesman Todd Schneider said late Monday. The company will not restart the reactor until it repairs the nozzles, he said.
"We will follow the standard industry-proven plan to make repairs," Schneider said. A similar condition has been found at other reactors, and a repair plan has been developed with input from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Electric Power Research Institute, Schneider said.
Workers late last week began the ultrasonic inspections. The NRC requires them at least every seven years at reactors similar in design to Davis-Besse.
During refueling shutdowns in 2006 and 2008, workers only eyeballed the reactor lid as required, looking for any signs of leakage. None was seen.
But workers doing visual inspections now at Davis-Besse have found boric acid residue on the top of the reactor lid around two nozzles, Schneider said.
The white residue is typically a sign that a crack has developed through the wall of a nozzle, allowing reactor coolant to seep into the extremely tiny space between the nozzle and the hole machined in the carbon steel head and eventually leaking to the outside of the reactor lid, where it instantly dries.
Such cracks, undetected for years, are what led to a pineapple-sized hole that workers discovered in 2002 in the original Davis-Besse reactor head.
Schneider said a second round of ultrasonic inspections would begin Wednesday and continue until early next week as technicians use two types of sonic probes. The differently shaped tools are designed to detect cracks running the length of each nozzle and those running around its circumference.
FirstEnergy made its initial report to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over the weekend.
NRC spokeswoman Viktoria Mitlyng in Chicago said Monday that the agency is paying close attention to the situation, given that such cracks led to major corrosion previously. She said an NRC metallurgical expert would join the agency's two inspectors stationed at the plant. The agency expects to look at whatever repair plan FirstEnergy comes up with before the repairs are actually made, Mitlyng said.
The first order of business, Mitlyng and Schneider said, is to figure out why the nozzles have cracked.
"This is not something that happens every day," Mitlyng said. "They and we have to understand how this occurred."
Reaction from the Union of Concerned Scientists, a watchdog organization that is not opposed to nuclear energy, was critical of the maintenance procedures. "The NRC and FirstEnergy do not appear to have fully learned the lessons of the first Davis-Besse fiasco," said UCS senior staff scientist Edwin Lyman in an e-mail response to a question. "The NRC's enhanced inspection requirements are still inadequate, given that the new damage is so extensive that repairs may require an extended shutdown."
The lid now on the Davis-Besse reactor has been in service only since 2004, a remarkably short time for such cracks to occur.
When FirstEnergy determined in 2002 that it could not repair the original reactor lid, it bought a lid from a Michigan utility that never completed its nuclear power plant decades earlier. That reactor was identical to the Davis-Besse reactor.
FirstEnergy also ordered a new lid in 2002 from a European manufacturer because there are no longer any U.S. manufacturers. But the company is not planning to take delivery and install it until 2014, Schneider said.
Other reactor operators -- both across the nation and in France, which has reactors similar to Davis-Besse -- have replaced the lids because of cracking in the nozzles. Reactor manufacturers today use a slightly different alloy in the reactor lid nozzles because of the widespread cracking.
The two-year shutdown that followed the discovery of the corrosion in the original Davis-Besse reactor lid cost the company at least $600 million for repairs and replacement power. The company stopped reporting expenses at that number.
The company eight years ago did not immediately and fully report the reactor lid's condition to the NRC, partly because FirstEnergy didn't really understand what had happened. This time, it promptly reported the findings and vowed to make whatever repairs are necessary.
"Safety is our No. 1 goal, and we are committed to ensuring the structural integrity of the equipment before restarting the plant," Barry Allen, Davis-Besse site vice president, said in a news release. "We have begun a comprehensive investigation to determine the underlying cause, and have secured nuclear contractor AREVA to make the repairs."
The Davis-Besse reactor is about 40 feet tall and 17 feet across and holds about 87,000 gallons of boric acid-laced reactor coolant. It generates more than 800 megawatts. One megawatt is considered sufficient to supply about 800 homes.