Safety first

A British company is enabling nuclear plant manufacturers to make more efficient, cost-efficient components, without compromising on safety -precisely what the nuclear industry requires to fuel its resurgence.

Bristol-based VEQTER’s Deep Hole Drilling (DHD) Technique refines component manufacture by determining the exact residual stress acting on a component throughout its entire thickness. In doing so, integrity may be verified and the need to rely on conservative standards now decades old is removed.

According to VEQTER's Dr Ed Kingston, using the DHD technique means components no longer have to be over-engineered and oversized, reducing the amount of raw material needed, therefore minimising its cost and weight.

The result is that less infrastructure is needed to support the component (typically reactor pipelines and particularly the welds connecting the pipes), leading to a significant overall reduction in plant construction costs.

A University of Bristol spinout, VEQTER launched commercially last year, offering through-thickness residual stress measurements up to 500mm deep on components of any shape. Previously the best other stress measurement techniques could offer was 30mm using neutron diffraction. Prior to the commercial launch, DHD was researched at the University for over a decade by Professor David Smith and was joined by Kingston in 1998.