Improvements in quality assurance from the Pisc programme

A programme for the evaluation of nondestructive examination procedures, PISC III, has been defined under the auspices of OECDs Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and of the Commission of the European Communities (CEC). The series of major co-operative programmes known as PISC (originally: Plate Inspection Steering Committe, now re-named: Programme for the Inspection of Steel Components) has been progressively developed to give an answer to the question, wether the nondestructive examination (NDE) techniques used on heavy sections are sufficiently effective and reliable to satisfy the requirements for integrity assessments on important structures such as pressure vessels