INSPECTING THE UNINSPECTABLE: FROM ENVIRONMENTS THAT WILL NOT SUPPORT LIFE TO VIDEO CAPTURE AT OVER 1200°C

摘要

In today's economic environment plant availability is a driving key performance indicator and many inspection programmes can become critical path tasks. It is quite common for inspectors to need to access and inspect areas of plant that are assessed as being uninspectable without lengthy shutdowns or decontaminations. As a result of the above "plant and asset owners understand the need to adequately quantify the scope of extensive repairs required in their plant", "they also recognise the need to understand the condition of their equipment or how long it will last in operation" For these reasons the Plant Manager's are looking at how they deploy their inspection resources to best manage their plant. To this end the process of inspecting is defined as the act of "examining carefully and critically, especially for flaws". I once heard it said,"Inspection is not rocket science". This is true. Rocket science is a trivial pursuit compared to the management of a hostile environment inspection. There are only a limited number of fuel types capable of lifting a payload into space, but an inordinate number of challenges and harm that can occur when inspecting the uninspectable.