Nondestructive testing on the HDR pressure vessel

The non-destructive tests conducted within the HDR Safety Program serve the objective to detect and interpret the flaw conditions of the reactor pressure vessel and their changes during load test. The following main tests have been carried out: baseline manual and automatic scans of the entire RPV, inspections of pressure vessel bolts, eddy current scans of the cladding, internal and external inspections of thermal shock induced nozzle corner cracks, real time monitoring of thermal shock tests using the acoustic emission technique. The report gives an overview about the used methods and the main results achieved.