An automatic ultrasonic equipment for the inservice inspection of the primary circuit of a P.W.R

The author presents and describes an in-service inspection equipment which has been designed for the inspection of a PWR primary circuit. For the design of this equipment, some decisions were made: mechanical movements kept to an absolute minimum, avoidance of the need for operator judgement as far as possible, retaining of all data, production of the result of each examination before the apparatus is stripped off the component, protection of operators as much as possible from radiation. After a comment of technical choices (ultrasonic, electronic and data processing), the author presents the standard planning schedule, the data output. Some recommendations are made to improve the equipment