Breakthrough in nuclear fusion

While reading a newspaper (old school, I know), I came across an article on nuclear fusion and how there has been a breakthrough in the ability to generate more energy from the process than it consumes, which is very encouraging news, as it is another potential power-generating source.

Briefly, it generates energy by fusing nuclear elements together instead of splitting them as conventional reactors do. This is a far safer methodology, using significantly less raw material and, just as importantly, it does not have any dangerous waste products and is therefore better for the environment.

I can still envisage NDT having a significant input in the manufacturing of nuclear fusion power plants and then in the ongoing testing of the components during their working life. It would be expected that condition monitoring will be deployed during the operational life and non-destructive testing (NDT) could utilise the full matrix capture (FMC), total focusing method (TFM) and intermodal total focusing method (TFMi) technologies, along with other methods and techniques (see the end of the article for a brief explanation of these technologies). The article advised that there should be some big investments in the plants and this should continue with more investment in better facilities on an ongoing basis, rather than stopping with the first working plant design. The additional work on the phased array ultrasound testing (PAUT) technology is bringing advances, and these will make for more accurate and reliable NDT using the ultrasonic method.

In China, the world’s currently most powerful wind turbines have been produced. The rotor measures a staggering 260 m in diameter; the speed that the tips of the rotors will reach has not been mentioned, but it must be very high. These turbines are designed for offshore placements and can generate 44.8 kWh of energy per revolution, giving up to 74,000 MWh of electricity annually. The need for both NDT and CM on these structures has to be significant. In the UK, wind, solar, biomass and hydropower accounted for 40% of the country’s electrical generation in 2022, which is up by 5% from the previous year’s 35%. Both wind and nuclear fusion, along with all of the other technologies, are continuing to be developed to make more environmentally friendly energy.

For the lovers of acronyms, there are more coming into mainstream use relating to ultrasonic testing. The training schools are offering courses on FMC, TFM and TFMi, which relate to PAUT.  

  • FMC is the term used for data acquisition and recording that allows for the capture of all A-scan signals from the sequence of pulsed and receiving elements in the array transducer. 

  • TFM is a method of processing FMC-collected data by synthetic focusing, which consists of a reconstruction inside a region of interest (frame of pixels) to focus at many points, which form a grid. It is based on the same steering and focusing approach as conventional PAUT; however, the focalisation is applied everywhere in the region of interest. It is a term given to the mathematical processing of waveforms collected by a phased array data acquisition process to provide an image of a volume under inspection.

  • TFMi uses intermodal analysis to improve TFM imaging.

PCN has been approached to look at certification for checking that bolts, typically those that hold the wind turbine towers to the foundations, are at the correct torque. This involves ultrasonics, but the specimens required for both training and subsequent examinations are potentially very large, which is a significant challenge. It would appear that the ultrasonic method is the one currently being developed more; however, remote visual inspections are also increasing, using cameras and artificial intelligence (AI) for signal processing. The old saying ‘there is nothing as consistent as change’ is still very apt.

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