Methods for Nondestructive Testing of Austenitic High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor Components

Safety-relevant components of high-temperature gas-cooled reactor components are mostly fabricated in nickel-based alloys and austenitic materials like Inconel-617, Hastelloy-X, Nimonic-86, or Incoloy-800H. Compared to ferritic steels, these austenitic materials can have a coarse-grained microstructure, especially in weldments and castings. Coarse-grained or elastic anisotropic materials are difficult to inspect with ultrasonics due to strong attenuation, high noise level (scattering, “grass” indications), and sound beam distortions (skewing, splitting, and mode conversion). Only few results dealing with the nondestructive testing of nickel-based alloys are known. The problem area, solutions, and first experiences are reported.