Remote Nuclear Inspections: How Bureau Veritas has helped to prevent project delays on nuclear sites

Bureau Veritas has evolved a number of existing services to support clients who have experienced restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, helping to maintain compliance to ensure safety across all sectors. Our remote testing and inspection services are helping clients to maintain standards and compliance even where inspection engineers are not permitted to visit or travel to a site.

Our dedicated Nuclear team work with various clients to offer support with remote conformity assessments of heat exchangers for nuclear reactors at nuclear power stations.

A remote solution

To meet specific strict standards for nuclear construction, certain stages of manufacturing must be validated by an internal inspection body. However, inspection engineers are currently unable to travel to and from selected countries to undertake the necessary tasks.

Bureau Veritas offers a solution using Realwear smartglasses, which are already used by our team to undertake remote supervision field audits, saving travel time, driving CO₂ savings and ultimately reducing costs for clients through reduced travel, expenses and manhours. And now we are delivering the same benefits to a number of clients, in addition to overcoming the challenges of travel restrictions during the global health crisis.

Using the smartglasses, our local inspection engineer in foreign countries can ensure full compliance of all tasks performed within the defined scope of the conformity assessment, relaying live footage with two-way interaction to an inspector from an internal inspection team watching on a PC from a remote location.

Immersive process

Denis Bourguignon, Nuclear technical and development manager for Bureau Veritas, said: “We proposed to a client’s internal inspection team, with whom we work regularly, that one of our inspectors from our Shanghai office moves to the site, equipped with connected glasses, to assist with manufacturing operations.

“The client inspector, in front of a PC, is present during the whole operation. He can ask to carry out a focus on detail, to carry out measurements, or to take technical calibration data.

“The process is much more immersive than a simple camera placed in a corner. A still image would not give this rendering and would not allow the inspector to participate in the assessment in this way. Here he can share and exchange dialogue with the Bureau Veritas engineer via the phone, at the same time.”