Summary of the 2016 annual meeting
General summary of the 2016 annual meeting of the ICG-EAC, N.P.O.The 2016 meeting of the ICG-EAC was held from May 15 to 20 in the modern city of Qingdao, China. It was attended by 126 technical delegates (from 14 countries), representing 53 member organizations. In addition to one plenary talk, a total of 78 technical presentations are included in the 2016 meeting minutes (53 oral presentations, 3 special session talks, 4 tutorial lectures, 13 summary/poster presentations and 5 presentation files for the minutes only).
The meeting was preceded by an excellent tutorial on “Crack growth testing methodologies for structural materials in high-temperature water environments” on the Sunday.
The technical sessions started with eight papers on a more general type of topic (plus one summary/poster presentation and one contribution for the meeting minutes only). The sessions on irradiation effects dealt primarily with IASCC of stainless steels. It consisted of six talks plus three summary/poster presentations. In the four sessions dealing with unwelded Ni-base alloys, there were 17 papers (plus two summary/poster presentations and four submissions for the minutes only) most of which dealt with the behavior of Alloys 690 or 600. On Wednesday the special session consisted of two parts. The first part was dedicated to Roger Staehle to honor his many contributions to the nuclear industry. The second part was dealing with "Material issues during construction of advanced PWR plants" and contained three very valuable talks. The low-alloy steel session (four talks and two summary/poster presentations) indicated a trend towards contributions looking at environmental and hydrogen effects on characteristic properties related to fracture mechanics. The nine papers presented during the stainless steel sessions covered a wide range of topics. Further information here was also provided in two summary/poster presentations and in one submission for the meeting minutes only. This year’s weldment sessions contained nine papers (plus three summary/poster presentations). The papers included studies on both, austenitic stainless and nickel-based weld metals.
Special thanks are expressed to the local host (Institute of Metal Research and Chinese Academy of Science) as well as to the numerous sponsors for making the Qingdao meeting such a great event! The meeting concluded with an optional technical tour visiting Haiyang AP1000 (Gen-III) nuclear power plant.
Links to general summaries of other meetings: