Project, engineering and technical services company Wood announced on 7 December that it has won a contract as the sole supplier of inspection qualification services to the Hinkley Point C NPP in the UK. EDF Energy has commissioned Wood's Inspection Validation Centre to qualify ultrasonic inspections on high integrity welds in primary circuit components for the two 1600MWe EPR reactors. The contract is effective immediately and the initial task order is worth $16m, Wood said. Wood CEO Robin Watson said: “Our role is to independently check the inspection methods – and assess and qualify the inspectors who will apply them – to ensure that they can detect any defects that could compromise the structural integrity of critical reactor components during the plant’s lifetime.

Wood’s teams will assess the inspection procedures and their supporting technical justifications and will carry out practical trials to demonstrate that the procedures can be applied and meet their objectives. Using flaw implantation techniques, faults will be introduced into welded test pieces to test and ultimately assure that inspectors can identify them. The work will create a total of 35 new jobs at the IVC in Warrington, UK, which works with specialist suppliers across the world.