Canada's NDT society offering training, certification testing, and professional membership to NDT Personnel
NDT Industry News
Do you have an NDT industry news article that would be of interest to our visitors? click here to submit it
CALGARY — The province of Alberta on Thursday estimated its 2021/22 budget deficit will shrink to C$18.2 billion ($14.5 billion), as its economy starts to recover from the damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Alberta’s 2020/21 deficit stood at C$20.2 billion, compared with a C$24.2 billion deficit projected in August, as recovering crude oil prices help the province narrow its deficit.Still, the deficit is larger than the historical trend, reflecting the impact of pandemic spending.
Finance minister Travis Toews said Alberta will set aside C$1.25 billion in contingency funding to fight COVID-19. The province also plans to invest nearly C$21 billion over three years in construction projects to create new jobs and support economic recovery. “Budget 2021 will provide funding … to ensure Albertans have a competitive edge, as economies reopen, growth restarts and opportunities reappear,” Toews said in his budget address.
Alberta is the center of Canada’s fossil fuel industry, and oil and gas revenues generate much of the province’s economic activity and revenues. The energy industry was battered last year by a collapse in global fuel demand due to COVID-19, although commodity prices are picking up as vaccines are rolled out globally.
Alberta said its financial exposure from an investment in TC Energy’s Keystone XL pipeline, which would have shipped to the U.S. but had its permit revoked by President Joe Biden, was C$1.3 billion. The government said if the project does not proceed it will seek to recoup the funds.Toews said Alberta’s real gross domestic product would grow 4.8% in 2020, having contracted 7.8% last year.The United Conservative Party government expects the provincial economy to reach pre-pandemic levels by 2022 and said the deficit will shrink to C$11 billion in 2022/23 and C$8 billion in 2023/24.
Revenue for the 2021/22 fiscal year is estimated at C$43.7 billion, up from $42.3 billion in 2020/21. Total spending is expected to be down slightly at C$61.9 billion, from C$62.5 billion in the previous fiscal year. Alberta forecast U.S. crude prices to average $46 per barrel in 2021/22.
Article via EnergyNow.ca
|
Phoenix, LLC has announced plans to construct a second neutron imaging center near the aerospace, defense and tech hub of the San Francisco Bay Area in northern California to address the regional demand for commercially available neutron radiography services. This announcement follows the success of the company’s first Phoenix Neutron Imaging Center, or PNIC, in Fitchburg, WI, which opened in the fall of 2019. PNIC is one of the only sites in the world to offer production-scale, high-quality neutron radiography (N-ray), a powerful industrial nondestructive testing method for quality assurance, R&D, and failure analysis. Unlike most other N-ray providers, Phoenix utilizes proprietary accelerator-based neutron generator technology as the source of neutrons for the N-ray processes.
The planned west-coast neutron imaging facility would provide a variety of key aerospace and defense nondestructive testing (NDT) services including thermal neutron radiography (film and digital), fast neutron radiography, thermal and fast neutron computed tomography (CT), X-ray imaging, X-ray CT, radiation effects testing, and neutron activation analysis. The facility is expected to further grow Phoenix’s employee base, with future potential to expand beyond a dedicated NDT service center into a regional manufacturing and engineering hub that will attract top talent from the California and West Coast university system to support Phoenix’s growing company charter.
The facility plans to support the growing US space and defense sector by providing critical inspection capabilities to energetic device manufacturers such as Pacific Scientific Energetic Materials Company (PacSci EMC). Energetic devices are crucial for aircraft, spacecraft and satellites, acting as the catalysts of ejection, payload separation, and explosive signal transfer systems, and so the ability to reliably and nondestructively inspect them using neutron imaging is paramount.
“PacSci EMC is committed to the highest levels of safety and quality in all our products. We use nondestructive inspection techniques such as neutron imaging to ensure our products perform exactly as designed. We’re pleased that Phoenix has chosen the Bay Area as a location for its next neutron imaging facility, as it fills a critical gap in the defense and aerospace nondestructive testing industrial base,” says PacSci EMC President Greg Scaven.
“Placing a new Phoenix neutron imaging center on the West Coast would allow Phoenix to better provide new and existing clients in critical industries access to this important technology that helps ensure their products are free from potentially catastrophic defects, significantly improving the security of a critical defense supply chain,” says Phoenix president Dr. Evan Sengbusch.
About Phoenix, LLC. Since 2012, Phoenix, LLC. has been designing and developing powerful, compact neutron generators for neutron imaging, radiation effects and survivability testing, and neutron activation analysis. Rather than producing neutron radiation through nuclear fission, which requires fissile material and produces heavy, long-lived radioactive byproducts, Phoenix uses particle accelerators to produce neutron radiation. Phoenix relies on this accelerator-driven method of neutron production to provide fast and thermal neutron imaging, matching reactor-driven neutron imaging facilities for image quality and throughput. Phoenix maintains an ISO 9001:2015 and AS9100 Rev D (2016) certified quality management system as well as NAS-410 certified nondestructive testing personnel. Article via Phoenix, LLC website.
|
 George Jaques and co-author Aziz U. Rehman received the American Society for Quality’s Philipe B. Crosby Medal for their first-of-its-kind guide “A Practical Field Handbook in Industrial Radiography and Radiograph Interpretation.” “It’s the first time that a publication in non-destructive testing has been awarded this medal, so it’s a great feeling,” said Jaques, who has spent more than 20 years using gamma rays to inspect welds on everything from oil pipelines to nuclear power plants.At nearly 500 pages, the book has more than 100 sketches, illustrations and graphs, about 200 radiographs, and the answers to more than 400 certification questions.
Jaques said copies have been sold in Canada, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Poland, Ireland and other overseas markets. “It was No. 1 nine times last year for vocational education on Amazon Canada and we have it in nine marketplaces on Amazon through Canada, the U.S. and various European markets.”
Some U.S. government energy departments have also adopted the book, which Jaques said is intended to advance and standardize the industry’s best practices.
He compares industrial radiography to a medical X-ray — but instead of looking for a fracture on a broken bone, he inspects the integrity of welds and materials on everything from pipelines to nuclear plants.
Working mainly as an independent consultant through his business Jaques Enterprise Inspection, Jaques, 42, (pronounced Jakes) typically spends most of his time on the road, visiting various sites. However, due to COVID-19, he’s been working from his home in Georges River, which he shares with wife Angela (Slade) Jaques, 35, and daughters, Julia, 7, and Jessica, 4.
In the meantime, he’s conducting radiography auditing as a consultant for the proposed Kitimat LNG project in northeast B.C. “I’ve been 23 years on the road, so being home is great,” he said. “I don’t have to travel.” However, he expects to be away from home in the spring to visit the Kitimat site and expects he will speak at the Canadian Institute for Non-destructive Evaluation conference in Windsor, Ont., and potentially speak to industry experts in Bahrain at another gathering this year. Meanwhile, he and Rehman have been busy trying to standardize the industrial field with their YouTube page RTFIPro and corresponding website, RTFIPro.com. They’re also surveying colleagues worldwide as part of a study examining disparities in the field across borders. “It’s a project based on global interpretation — how people vary with their interpretation,” he said. “Basically it’s about how accurate our industry is based on location, experience and education.”
Article by Cape Breton Post
|