INSPECTION OF NICKEL ALLOY WELDS: RESULTS FROM FIVE-YEAR INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission established and coordinated the international Program for the Inspection of Nickel alloy Components (PINC). The goal of PINC was to evaluate the capabilities of various nondestructive examination (NDE) techniques to detect and characterize primary water stress corrosion cracking (PWSCC) in dissimilar metal welds. Round‐robin results showed that a combination of conventional and phased‐array ultrasound provide the highest performance for flaw detection and depth sizing in dissimilar metal piping welds. The effective detection of flaws in bottom‐mounted instrumentation penetrations by eddy current and ultrasound shows that it may be possible to reliably inspect these components in the field.