A pipe inspection round robin test

A round robin test was conducted to determine the effectiveness and reliability of current ISI field practices for the inspection of U.S. nuclear reactor piping. This test was designed by a statistician to measure specific inspection performance parameters and to control other variables so that they would not adversely impact the measurements. Six inspection teams from commercial vendors worked 11 hours per day for six days each of three weeks. A total of 1500 inspections were performed and form the basis of the results reported. This paper concentrates on quantifying the types of error sources and their magnitude that were made by the inspection teams during this round robin exercise. In addition, the need and methodology for handling false calls is explained