Spent nuclear fuel is generally stored in ponds awaiting transport to geological final disposal sites. Creation of such burial sites has progressed slowly and few countries have final storage solutions in place. An intermediate solution is to transfer used fuel from the ponds to dry storage containers. This solution provides a low maintenance storage solution for fuel for a period of the order of 100 years. Central to each container is a stainless steel canister; closure of the loaded canister is achieved by welding the rolled canister shell to a forged lid. In this application, volumetric inspection of the austenitic lid-to-shell closure weld is required. Doosan Babcock has designed and delivered a unique 3 probe phased-array inspection to meet this requirement. Access to the inspection volume is constrained by a range of physical and environmental factors which complicate deployment of the probes and execution of the inspection. For this reason Doosan Babcock also designed, manufactured and commissioned a bespoke automated scanning system which is used to deliver the inspection.
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