NDE capability demonstration and inspection qualification
The European Commission (JRC-Petten) has published the proceedings of the "International specialists meeting on NDE capability demonstration and inspection qualification", which took place on 11-13 March 1997 at the JRC's Institute of Advanced Materials. The meeting was intended to provide an international forum for the discussion of recent developments, results and experience with NDE techniques capability demonstration and inspection qualification methods. It brought together 120 participants from the academic, research and industrial communities. Eighteen countries were represented, and a total of 43 presentations were given. The meeting provided an opportunity to compare and assess the qualification principles as proposed or applied by the American Performance Demonstration Initiative, the European Network on Inspection Qualification and the IAEA in its proposed guidelines specific to WWERs. The meeting addressed, in terms of state-of-the-art, the capability demonstration of NDE procedures applied to the major nuclear reactor components and the tools to set a capability level: performance demonstration or qualification. It was subdivided in four major technical sessions which addressed in turn: - Qualification principles and approaches as developed at national and international level; - Experience gained so far with the application of qualification; - Subjects related to inspection qualification such as NDE effectiveness evaluation work; - Setting the inspection objectives through risk-based (or informed) inspection. National positions or experiences were presented showing the typical variety of applications of one or two general principles or methodologies for qualification in agreement with national legal and traditional aspects. Experience developed by national inspection qualification bodies and by pilot studies were rich in information concerning the difficulties which were encountered during the studies. Risk-based inspection concepts were explained due to their relevance with the setting of the ISI objectives and, therefore, the level of qualification required for each situation considered.