IIW History 1990-2015

For the near future, as a result, with developing countries wanting to use fossil fuels to service their growing populations, this situation is not expected to lessen greatly. The welding industry, in consideration of this, has therefore played a prominent role in the application and development of new state-of-the-art processes and procedures in the construction, inspection and repair of coal-fired and nuclear power generation plants. This issue has achieved greater relevance through the growing synergy and participation between Working Units in IIW to demonstrate the importance of structural health monitoring (SHM) through a workshop held at the 68th Annual Assembly and Conference held in Helsinki in 2015. Over 60 delegates from 17 countries attended the workshop that covered the extension of the life of ageing structural assets beyond normal economic restraints through the use of the latest techniques, such as sensors, to manage degradation and provide a high level of confidence in the integrity of such assets. Power from fossil fuel plant is now diminishing rapidly and, despite initial setbacks caused by the Fukushima tsunami in 2011, the interest in nuclear power capacity as an alternative has increased significantly in more recent times with over 60 reactors currently under construction in 15 countries, notably China, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Russia. 4 China on the other hand has also signalled a significant change from fossil fuel dependency to renewable energy sources from 2015 on. China’s influence as a major promoter of international infrastructure development in Africa and Central Asia therefore carries strong implications for other developing countries’ energy and the choices that they will make. 5 It is simpler and more effective to use solar and wind power to individually service more isolated communities than to provide energy through an extensive supply and grid network, a situation which is now becoming more common in developed countries. Wind power has now become the world’s fastest growing energy source over the last decade and has also become one of its most rapidly expanding industries with sales of over USD 3 billion in 2008. 6 By 2012 it had become a USD 10 billion/year industry in the USA alone, with wind energy accounting for 40% of the increased electricity capacity for that year in the USA 7 . China has rapidly become a world leader in wind power and now ranks fourth in installed capacity. 8 In Europe, wind farms have also increased at an exponential rate with both Denmark and Portugal producing over 20% of their total electricity production through wind generated power. Conventional and advanced welding processes have been the key to the construction of wind turbines, in particular submerged arc welding and GMAW processes, employing, in some situations, robotic welding to reduce costs of manufacture and to increase productivity. This has made wind power more competitive as a source of energy.

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