November 02, 2015 - Inspections will play a crucial role in the decisions to extend operating licenses for many of the nation’s aging nuclear power plants, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory has a tool that could help. “The question that needs to be answered is whether the concrete structures that cannot be replaced in a nuclear power plant can perform their intended safety functions,” said ORNL’s Dwight Clayton. While commercial nondestructive evaluation techniques are useful for examining structures such as bridges, they are largely ineffective for nuclear power plants, where concrete is particularly thick and reinforced with heavy steel. The technique developed by Clayton and colleagues uses linear array ultrasound and advanced signal processing to reveal flaws.
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