Pre-service inspection of reactor pressure vessel

Nuclear power plants require periodic In-service Inspection (ISI) to assure the reliability of safety related components. To acquire base line data, Pre-Service Inspection (PSI) is performed before operation of a nuclear power plant. In 1992, IHI completed the PSI of two boiling water reactor type nuclear power plants using newly developed automated ultrasonic inspection systems. The automated inspection systems use automatic examination devices and high speed work stations to acquire and process data. The system demonstrated and excellent performance during PSI by reducing required staff and facilitating data interpretation by presenting high quality graphical data. This paper describes PSI performed using the new inspection system. (author)