ICG-EAC 2015: Minutes of the Meeting

1 General Information

The 2015 meeting of the ICG-EAC was held from May 17 to 22 in the historic university city of Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. It was attended by 131 technical delegates from 14 countries, representing 61 member organizations, and four guests invited by the Chairman. One honorary and one retired member were also present. A rather large number of 44 persons were first-time attendees at this ICG-EAC meeting and there were 11 accompanying persons. The local-host team was led by Gary Was (University of Michigan, USA), who was greatly supported by a professional meeting planner company (To Plan Ahead), under the lead of Linda Nelson.
This year the meeting was preceded by a tutorial on “Crack initiation test methodologies for structural materials in high-temperature water environments” on the Sunday, which was well attended (not only by the newcomers).
On the Sunday evening a generous welcome reception at the Dahlmann Campus Inn Hotel officially opened the meeting.
On the Wednesday afternoon, meeting participants and accompanying persons were invited to go on a tour to the Henry Ford Museum Complex (to visit either the Museum or Greenfield Village).
That evening they attended a reception at the historic 1913 Herschell – Spillman Carousel and the banquet thereafter in the Eagle Tavern (both situated at the Greenfield Village). During the dinner the Chairman (Gary Was) expressed his sincere thanks to all attendees, the meeting planner (Linda Nelson), the ICG-EAC administration (John Hickling, Larry Nelson and Stefan Ritter), and financial sponsors.
A very interesting visit to some labs of the University of Michigan (Michigan Ion Beam Laboratory, Irradiated Materials Complex and Electron Microbeam Laboratory) was organized right after the end of the meeting on Friday afternoon.

2 Board of Directors Meetings

The Board of Directors met on Sunday afternoon with most members present and then again on Thursday evening. Tetsuo Shoji, Il-Soon Hwang and Martin Morra were unable to be present due to urgent business and Pål Efsing was not able to attend the Thursday meeting. En-Hou Han attended both meetings as an observer, invited by the Chairman.
The first major item on the agenda was to nominate a slate for the Group Leadership (serving for the meetings in 2016 to 2018), which was then presented to the meeting attendees during the week. The Board also decided to renew the contracts of the Administrator and Scientific Secretary for another 3-year’s term. John Hickling informed the Group Leadership before the meeting about his wish not to prolong his Webmaster contract with the NPO. His outstanding efforts for the Group during the last 3 years, as well as during the preceding 15 years was gratefully acknowledged by the Group Leadership and it was decided to transfer the Webmaster‘s tasks to the Secretary from October 1st on. A further important point was the discussion about a renewal of the NPO’s website(s). After about 15 years of reliable operation it is necessary to replace the existing websites with a new one on a state of the art web-platform (also for security reasons) with some new functionalities. It was decided to finance the programming of the new website by a moderate increase of the membership fee to 700.- US$ for next year. Further points of extended discussion were the new Sunday tutorial and the round-robin on EAC initiation.
Apart from these major items, attention was given by the Board to membership issues, meeting mechanics, the final 2015 technical agenda, the Group’s financial status, the venues for meetings in 2016 to 2018 and some further minor points.

3 General Business Session – Monday Morning

The technical part of the meeting was held in an impressive meeting hall in the Michigan League building. A continuous supply of coffee and tea seems to be a (well appreciated) standard feature nowadays at the meetings. The Chairman brought the meeting to order using the traditional ICG-EAC gavel. After expressing his thanks to the local host’s meeting planner (Linda Nelson) he explained some administrative issues and introduced the Group Leadership and first-time attendees. Gary then welcomed Warren Bamford, the representative from a prospective new member (Westinghouse Electric; actually one of the founding members of the Group) who then introduced his organization by giving a short talk (a more detailed presentation had been sent out to all meeting attendees before the meeting). More details on changes to the existing Group membership are reported below. Thereafter Linda Nelson (the local host’s meeting planner) presented some information on the meeting mechanics. The first part of the Business Session was rounded up by a vivid plenary lecture given by Prof. James Duderstadt (President Emeritus and University Professor of Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan) introducing the University of Michigan.

4 Details of Membership Changes

One organization has resigned from membership of the ICG-EAC: Center of Nuclear Technology Development (CDTN), Brazil (CP: Célia Figueiredo) and with great regret the membership of Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), USA (CP: Bogdan Alexandreanu) had to be terminated due to lack of active participation. Peter King (formerly Babcock & Wilcox Canada) became a retired member.

The following changes of affiliation, representation, etc. are noted:

Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization (Japan) is now Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA); the new CP is Kensaku Arai (formerly Masaaki Kikuchi),
Bechtel Bettis and Bechtel KAPL (USA) were combined to Bechtel Marine Propulsion Corporation (BMPC); the CP is Dave Morton,
For Babcock & Wilcox (Canada) the new CP is Paul Neubrand (formerly Peter King),
Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (Canada) is now Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL); the CP remains Mike Wright,
AMEC (UK) is now Amec Foster Wheeler; the CP remains John Stairmand,
For Institute of Metal Research (China) the new CP is En-Hou Han (formerly Jianqiu Wang),
For STUK – Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (Finland) the new CP is Mirka Schildt (formerly Martti Vilpas),
For E.ON Kernkraft GmbH (Germany) the new CP is Maxim Selektor (formerly Michael Stanislowski),
For EDF Energy Nuclear Generation (UK) the new CP is Luke Wood (formerly Jennifer Owen),
For CEA (France) the new CP is Catherine Guerre (formerly Max Helie),
For JAPCO (Japan) the new CP is Yusuke Nakano (formerly Yutaka Ueyama),
For Hitachi (Japan) the new CP is Yusaku Maruno (formerly Junya Kaneda),
For Vattenfall AB (Sweden) the new CP is Torbjörn Glas (formerly Christer Jansson).

5 Technical Sessions

A total number of 85 technical presentations (a new record in number!) were included in the 2015 meeting minutes (52 regular oral presentations, 5 tutorial lectures, 8 special session presentations, 14 summary/poster presentations, and 6 presentation files for the minutes only). The oral presentations were given in 17 sessions. Three poster sessions were held this year with 14 short summary presentations ‘promoting’ the very interesting posters. On Monday morning, an introductory talk was also given by Prof. James Duderstadt. The order of business and overall distribution of papers among the working groups were as follows:

Low-alloy steels: 5
Austenitic alloys – stainless steels: 10 (+ 3 summary/poster presentations + 1 presentation for minutes only)
IASCC: 9 (+ 5 summary/poster presentation)
Weldments: 7 (+ 2 summary/poster presentation + 1 presentation for minutes only)
Special session on “Materials Degradation Plant Operating Experience”: 8 (followed by a panel discussion)
Austenitic alloys – nickel-base: 16 (+ 3 summary/poster presentations + 4 presentations for minutes only)
More general topics: 5 (+ 1 summary/poster presentation)

The papers are accessible via the table on the “Meeting Minutes 2015” page and can be sorted in different ways:

By clicking on the column name: presenter, member organization, country, session (alphabetic) or title.
By entering a search term in the fields below the column names.
By entering a keyword into the field below the column name “Keywords”; the following keywords are available and assigned to the presentations by the Scientific Secretary: A 600, A 690, A 182/132/82, A 152/52, other Ni-base, 304 SS, 316 SS, 347 SS, SS weld, other SS, IASCC, SCC, SICC, CF, PWR, BWR, CANDU, crack initiation, crack propagation, data generation, mechanisms/modelling, field experience, cold work, and general papers.

Alternatively, the presentations can be accessed via the hyperlinks contained in the session summaries (drafted by the respective session chairpersons and subsequently collated and edited by the Scientific Secretary). These are accessible under the menu item “Session summaries”.
Currently there is no “complete download version” of the minutes available.
Particularly important, now that we are distributing the minutes only via the Group’s technical archive website, is that you (and all your colleagues who receive ICG-EAC information) respect the following confidentiality warning when accessing papers:
PLEASE NOTE: The presentations you are about to view and/or save to your computer contain preliminary data for use only within the ICG-EAC, NPO and may not be cited without receiving explicit permission from the relevant authors! If this has been obtained, please reference them as ‘personal communications’, rather than as documents from an ICG-EAC meeting.

6 General Business Session – Friday Morning

The Chairman led the Business Session on Friday. Firstly, the membership voted to accept the prospective new member (Westinghouse Electric) into the Group. Then the proposed slate for the Group Leadership (which was handed out to all meeting attendees earlier that week) was presented and approved in full by the members present in Ann Arbor. The Administrator gave a short report on the Group’s financial situation. The financial position is expected to be slightly positive by the end of 2015, but due to the costs for the renewal of the ICG-EAC website(s) an increase of the membership fee by 50.- US$ will be necessary for next year. No objections were raised by the members present.
The Scientific Secretary explained the procedure for finalization of technical presentations for the minutes, the structure and operation of the Group’s three websites, as well as the plan for a complete renewal of the website(s).
Thereupon John Stairmand gave an update on the round-robin initiative on SCC initiation.
A presentation was given by En-Hou Han concerning the next annual meeting, which will be held from the 15th to the 20th of May, 2016 in Qingdao, China and John Stairmand reported that the 2017 meeting will be hosted in Chester, UK from May 7 to 12, 2017.
Brief introductions to other meetings relevant to EAC were then made as follows:

ECG-COMON Meeting, Prague, CZ, Jun 15 and 16, 2015 (http:/www.ecg-comon.org)
Nuclear Corrosion Summer School (NuCoSS-15), Slovenia, Jul 5 – 10, 2015 (contact: Stefan Ritter, http:/www.zag.si/nucoss)
Conf. on Environmental Degradation, Aug 8 – 15, 2015, Ottawa, Canada (contacts: Mike Wright or Peter Andresen)
4th Int. Symposium on Materials and Reliability in Nuclear Power Plants, Sept 21 – 23, 2015, Shenyang, China (contact: En-Hou Han, http:/4mrnpp.imr.ac.cn/)
4th Int. Conference on Fatigue of Nuclear Reactor Components, Sep 28 – Oct 1, 2015, Seville, Spain (http:/www.conferencefatiguesevilla2015.com/)
CNS Int. Nuclear Components Conference (INCC 2015), Nov 1 – 4, 2015, Mississauga, Canada (contact: Peter King, http:/www.incc2015.org)
Int. LWR Material Reliability Conference & Exhibition 2016, Aug 1 – 4, 2016, Chicago, IL, USA (contact: Raj Pathania)

There being no further business to discuss, Gary recalled some meeting statistics and thanked all attendees and the local host’s meeting planner team before handing over the gavel to the new Chairman, T-K Yeh who closed the 2015 meeting after a short acceptance speech.

7 Concluding Remarks

The 2015 meeting can be regarded as another great event of the Group, even with a new feature (Sunday tutorial), contributing to the education of the next generation of nuclear (corrosion) scientists and engineers. This tutorial has been rated with good marks in a survey performed during the meeting week; therefore another edition is already planned for next year. Also the new round-robin initiative on EAC initiation is on track and first preliminary results are expected to be presented at next year’s meeting.
I would like to express my sincere thanks to the head of the local host, Gary Was, who did a great job acting as host (even avoiding a meeting fee!) AND as Chairman! I’m also thankful to the meeting planner, Linda Nelson (and her team), who provided the basis for this very successful meeting, to our Group Leadership and Administrator, and last but not least to all attendees!
Finally, I would like to gratefully acknowledge John Hickling’s work as Webmaster and for giving Larry and me such a great support during the last three years and hope that we will see him (and of course also Cathy) still at many future meetings as an honorary member!

Hope to see you next year in Qingdao!
Stefan Ritter (e-mail)

July 2015