I was talking to the maint. manager at our power station and he was on about how a lot of places that have used these high quality steels for main boiler steam pipes etc are worried.
Turns out that there has been a catastrophic failure at a new 4 week old chinese power station.On investigation it turned out that the main steam pipes were not what they should have been and the paperwork to prove their provenance had been forged in association with a QA firm from Houston Texas.
Has anyone else had or heard of similar things?
He did say that those chinese responsible had been tried and hung as an example!

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I know someone who works for a major plant manufacturer and they've had problems with castings from China, where the QA that should have been done hadn't... basically, many of the cast components were found to have large voids in them, drastically weakening them which is something you really don't want with components intended for heavy lifting and shifting kit. The supplier in question was told to go back to getting their parts made in Europe!

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Oh yesindeedy.... I've had lots of fun and experience with metals from China in my career! Railway wheels certified as R8T turning up as R7 when tested 😮 . Melt certificates for roll forgings that post date the forging ::) .
I had a sheet of rolled aluminium recently 20mm thk 2m x 1m which appeared to have a crack in the edge.... so we inspected it fully and 75% of it was de laminated so we had it analysed and it wasn't even the correct material. Given it was fur structural use in a train we were not happy.
BUT
These have been the exceptions to the rule of late... The Chinese mills will cut corners but also know that the consequences will be severe, I remember a Fridge company out there making 1000s of fridges and all of them would fail within hours... lets just say the managers there were summarily dealt with...
The rule in structural and rail is formal first article inspection of goods and processes inc deep audit of entire paper trail from melt to billet to forging to inspection... obviously it depends on the value of the job but I always witness as much of the process as possible...
Generally the steel out of China is reasonable and certainly better than the dire Russian crud I was being offered in the 90s.

EDIT As someone who operates a small foundry, you get what you pay for and having visited a Chinese railway foundry you can see why there are often problems with chilled casting, porosity and as for the metal quality, always insist on new ingot certified and request a pre sample of the metal to be used where possible... We always ask for 100% inspection witnessed by a local independent inspector.

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