The DIAGNOSTICS activities were primarily supported by ENSI and were dealing with the development and evaluation of advanced non-destructive in-service inspection and continuous monitoring techniques for the early detection of material degradation (e.g., fatigue, SCC, flow-accelerated corrosion) in the technical pre-crack stage or the characterization of the actual ageing conditions (e.g., irradiation embrittlement or thermal ageing) in field components in the frame of advanced pro-active ageing management programs. This is fundamentally different from classical non-destructive testing within the periodic in-service inspection programs that is dealing with the detection and sizing of large defects and flaws.
Since the end of 2012, this activity is currently running at a low-level with own resources only due to a lack of external funding. Examples of past and current activities are given in Figures 1 and 2.