Approaches used by Dukovany NPP and Temelín NPP are similar for qualifications of inspection procedures applied for selected RPV inspection areas as nozzle inner radii, safe-end (or nozzle to MCP homogenous weld) and circumferential RPV shell welds, required by the Czech Regulatory Authority (State Office for Nuclear Safety - SONS) in compliance with the Decree 214/97 to be completed till 2002. The majority of test assemblies with defects were manufactured in the frame of the Phare project 4.1.2/93.

State of the art of WWER 440 circumferential RPV shell weld qualification project, which started in 1999, is at present concentrated on cladded plate test block with weld and intended defects fabrication. Substantial progress made in technical justification elaboration for inspection procedures qualification of components made of low alloy steels as 15Kh2MFA(A) specific for WWER 440 and subsequently for 15Kh2NMFA(A) reactor pressure vessels (RPVs) is described in detail in the contribution. At present the above requirements are applicable at least for mechanised UT examinations of safety relevant WWER type components and piping systems welds with special emphasis on RPV inspection areas, dissimilar welds generally, longitudinal welds on austenitic elbows together with the longitudinal weld intersection with circumferential austenitic elbow to piping weld.

Temelín NPP together with NRI have been devoting special effort to ECCS systems, where special emphasis is devoted to dissimilar welds of cladded piping. Several test blocks with realistic defects have been manufactured and tested. Preliminary conclusions and details of open tests are given in the contribution.