Simply stated, online remote advanced nuclear power welding consulting and support are your online remote welding engineering department. It uses email, phone, fax, video conferencing and an engineer who have a welding engineering degree, a materials engineering degree, and 10 years of nuclear power experience, to help you establish and specify advanced nuclear power plant welding requirements, answer technical welding questions, and advise your designers, engineers, procurement, fabrication, quality and inspection personnel on matters of welding for the design, procurement, fabrication, and inspection of advanced nuclear power plant weldments. A weldment is any product, structure, component, part or assembly joined by welding.
The online remote welding engineering department is a convenient, reliable, time and cost saving resource your advanced nuclear reactor design team and welding fabricators in the supply chain can use to get the right answers to your welding questions, or solutions to your welding problems without having a welding engineer travel to your location or maintain a full-time welding engineering department and staff.
Nuclear power is being promoted as a continuous clean energy source to supplement the intermittent operation of wind and solar. It’s also being looked at for the energy consuming data centers that support many artificial intelligence applications.
Because of health, safety, and quality concerns, all activities related to the design, procurement fabrication, welding, testing, and inspection of nuclear power plant components are performed in accordance with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers code (ASME CODE), and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) requirements, by following a written quality assurance program, which requires activity documentation and traceability of who did what, when, where, and how.
Nuclear power plant component welding, design, fabrication and quality questions and problems can come up when least expected. Therefore, having a welding engineer who has the right answers and solutions, and a welding engineering degree, and nuclear power plant welding and quality experience, are essential to avoid welding, design, fabrication and quality mistakes and their consequences.
Unfortunately, there is a lack of welding knowledge and a chronic shortage of welding engineers in industry, including the nuclear industry, because the science and technology of welding are not generally taught at the four-year university or college level to engineering students except to those few students in a welding engineering degree program. And these few students are choosing other welding engineering career paths due to the uncertainty in building new advanced nuclear power plants. Also adding to the welding engineering shortage are the retiring welding engineers who have nuclear power plant welding experience.
As a result, most potential supplier firms that design and fabricate weldments typically have no one on their staff who has a welding engineering degree. This limits their ability to interpret and apply the welding, quality and fabrication requirements in ASME Codes and NRC requirements, and setup the required Quality Assurance Program, and obtain the required Certificate of Authorization to use the ASME Code Symbol Stamp, needed to qualify as nuclear suppliers to design, procure, fabricate, weld, test and inspect nuclear power plant components. And thereby reducing the welding fabrication supply chain.
If the nation is to gain the full benefits of advanced nuclear reactor systems, the domestic nuclear welding supply chain must be revived, and suppliers who are still in the supply chain must be supported; especially those suppliers that embrace the use of artificial intelligence to control welding robotics and automation to achieve consistent quality, higher productivity and lower cost.